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Vestigial Tail (Free verse) by zodiac
Things we believed as children are all true:
we're robots, basement science. Flesh and bone
stretched past its present borders once when we
were tendriled on an amneotic sea.
But slow to learn. Now Girly's laughing, bony
hand pressed to her face, says - God, oh you
would have to've known, how could you not have known?
She shakes like cream. When the truth is, I knew.
Bathed in a kitchen sink, my mother dragged
soapsuds to shape me: her nose, a father's chin,
all secondhand and mentionless (except
that keyhole scar - where they wound me while I slept.)
So taught my hands to pass it, bound me in
a skin. But I was feral once, and snag-
toothed prowled my natal landscape like a djinn.
Oh, its ghost I feel now - it's waving like a flag.
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