My father is an infinite house, bleeding
A safety always changing shape. I love
Him deliberate and patiently. He is full
Of shit and I adore him. I call him mine
And mean it. But never without guilt
Everything he owns, he has broken
•
I have loved what has been broken
By him. Been made a surrogate of bleeding
And that has not stopped me from choking guilt
To death. Such a thick and relentless love
My father is a fist of complexity. My father is mine
And I am just a vessel made full
•
He calls my mother into every room until it is full
Shakes every wall loose and broken
Until the begging also becomes mine
My father is an enemy of her absence. Bleeding
Steady just to drown it. Picking love
From its white knuckles and spitting at guilt
•
I sometimes make his burdens mine
Sometimes make a mosaic of guilt
To give light some room, hands bleeding
And gripping and scraping and full
I don’t want my house to be broken
I cover everything inside it with my love
•
When my mother left, I returned to child love
Walked backward into the smallest skin of mine
Watched my father decay. A broken
Shadow. A merciless tantrum of guilt
In her absence, I’m afraid of what makes him full
Wonder if he will slowly flatten from the bleeding
•
My parents made a broken love,
What’s mine has always been bleeding.
Guilt, what has always kept us full.
Lindsay Young is a queer, Black poet from Long Island, New York. Lindsay was crowned a 2018 NUPIC (National Underground Poetry Individual Competition) Co-Champion. She was a member of the 2019 Brooklyn Slam team, and was part of their poetry production that premiered in Antigua in the Summer of 2019. She is the author of “Salt to Taste,” her debut book of poetry, which was published the Summer of 2019. She is a Winter Tangerine alumnus, a 2020 Watering Hole fellow, and her work has been published in The Fem Lit Magazine, The Offing Magazine, and featured on Blavity and SlamFind. She currently works for nonprofit organizations as a counselor and workshop facilitator, largely servicing youth of color.