asperatus.

When I was young and knew nothing,
the sound of my mother lulled me to sleep;
she would sing, her voice a rising wave
of something more than I could know,
filled with a crashing sort of love that killed
just as it would kiss.

There is always a pressure that builds
behind closed doors - it is a silent command
testing natural boundaries and it has no
name nor sound but it is so easily felt in the
houses of those who sleep with no homes
but the ones they find in the dark.

And sometimes, when the sun blinks and
the moon asks for a crashing kiss, when
homes open their doors, I wonder if black
holes are closer than we think—that the sky
is nothing but a shroud of silk that lays
across an unmade bed; across uneven shoulders;
tucked and knotted around my throat.

And sometimes there are no clouds, just
a bright and shining dust-storm that falls
like snow would; that falls like ashes would;
that falls like two flying girls would—
and the moon would feel betrayed by the stars
that shined in eyes that could not see them.

And sometimes the burning lightning and
screaming thunder is what we imagine war
must sound like; and sometimes the burning
lightning and screaming thunder is what we
mold fireworks after; and sometimes the
burning lightning and screaming thunder is
not burning nor screaming - it is us dancing
in those flames.

It is a bonfire in which we dream, a spitting
truth that leaves itself seared into the wood
that let it live; it is a house fire where we 
slept that flickering dream, that shadow caster
of an image, that hellish human nightmare; it is
a forest fire—that is to say that we are those
fires, that razing burn that leaves nothing behind
except for the smallest parts of us, hoping that
they will grow better this time.

Now I am old and still know nothing
and the sound of my mother still creeps
upon me, her voice among the sky
and ricocheting into the ground below -
after all it is not the strike that kills but
the echo of it and my black-hole eyed mother
is still humming even when I am alone and
the only mother here is the one knocking
at my window.