I grew up with bombs exploding
around me; the name-calling, the teasing,
the nasty remarks, especially on prize-giving day.
Sometimes the bombs did not go off:
I stored them in my mind’s cupboards,
wrapped in tissue paper, their weight
showing high on the scale of enormity,
that is, how a father and mother could bomb
a child, remove his skin and fill it again
with someone else’s child. Be like Larry,
they’d say of the neighbour’s boy
until I sent a bomb of my own
and Larry’s legs were blown to bits. Eventually,
though, the cupboards were choc-a-bloc to over-
flowing. Which is when I used the hallways
and the stairs. Of course some explosions happened,
the phuph of their force cracking the windows,
the curtains thrusting inwards as though aching
to kiss someone. No kisses in our house, though.
Just people with a good aim. And an arsenal. But my
lifeline, weaving like coloured streamers
through the house from every birthday
to the next, was steady, bomb-proof, a testing ground.
So I danced, limbs intact, all the way home.