RAJON STAUNTON
i have my own ways of forgetting
& all of them begin with a shard of glass
or the thin edge of a steel blade,
something sharp enough
to carve away the skin we share.
how about i play the butcher
& it can all be over soon. i learned
it from you, dad— this destruction
of us by my own hand—when i watched
the blood spread across your cheek
like a red dahlia coming up for air.
your long frame arched forward over
our porcelain sink, razor dripping fresh
blood into the drain; you picked at the scabs
left littering your lower jaw burying your scruffy
ingrown beard. & no, you didn’t teach me how
to shave, only how to know that the splitting open
of my own skin could be a roadmap
with one red line, leading me
back to who i used to be.
sleepwalking
a burning haibun after torrin a. greathouse
once, as a little boy I tried on my mother’s high heels & never took them off. as a little boy, I held my mother’s hands, rolled her rosy flesh through my fingers like precious stones under the halo of her lamp & I can admit this is how I learned to breathe. I watched her braid her hair like silk through a loom & make real my misplaced girlhood. as a little boy, I prayed not to be. I wanted to be just like my mother. the origin of wanting is always a dream about something we can’t have. maybe the dream is that I walked until my feet cracked like sheets of dried clay, or until I made it to my reflection. & so what if it’s a dream where I walk into my mother’s skin & leave with her name. as a little boy, I turned into my father. I broke the mirror & misplaced myself. I spend my days dancing through shattered glass. my mother tells me I have his nose, his cruel eyes & hands. as a little boy, I prayed not to be. now, I walk through my mother’s skin & leave only with her creaky joints. it is hard to tell which bones are mine to keep.
//
once, as a little boy I tried on my mother’s high heels
& never took them off. as a little boy, I held my mother’s
hands like precious stones under the halo of her lamp
& I can admit this is how I learned to breathe. I watched
her braid her hair like silk through a loom & make real my
misplaced girlhood. as a little boy, I prayed not to be. I wanted
to be just like my mother. the origin of wanting is always
a dream about something we can’t have.
//
as a little boy, I prayed not to be. I walked
through my mother’s skin & left only with her creaky joints
these days it is hard to tell which bones are mine to keep.
RaJon Staunton (they/them) is a queer Black writer from West Virginia. Their words can be found in Hobart, Teen Vogue, Parentheses Journal, and 100 Days in Appalachia, among other publications. RaJon currently serves as a Curatorial Editor for Poets Reading the News and is a senior at Marshall University where they study English, Anthropology, and Political Science. When they’re not writing or editing poems, they can be found on Twitter @restaunton.
Art by Tyler Moore