Tattoo

My father’s house
full of wild lines, tunes,
swans I painted
over the windows—

Now and then
daylight throws rainbows
on dark
walls in the afternoon.
The chalice —
my father’s arms
cannot shelter this fabric
I call mine—
I tear it myself.
Pressing needles into the soft casing—
I engraving your face
on the one thing I can not take off—
apostatize, or abandon
to the cold floor,
with the remnants of body-
heat clinging.

The stinging touch, every
laden second
illustrating an archive
of shunned-awakenings
lonesome waves
a deep,
heavy groan
in a wishful chamber
of viscera; splits like a cracked lip,
hurts like sirens up close.

The tattoo
a chalice that cradles her death—
her children, never in the unused rooms
painted mauve to resembled
early morning mountains—
The contents of hours
under a needle, hours
spent within, wondering
where to go to mourn.