Mom's dead and no one is around to watch Adam watch
himself in the mirror with a cigarette,
at eight,
aping the moping hipster look.
Puberty's first bone
was the length of his legs.
Wax box of heels in the crawlspace
above the trailer's bathroom,
where he smokes stolen joints:
heels might as well be glass slippers to slip into
and out of himself.
He polishes the mildew and mold out of the cheap leather
and shines them on,
as if they were his mother's ego,
as if they were his mother's hair.
At eleven, the sound of midnight was the distant hum
of the electric heat:
air damp and cold enough for his skin to prickle into gooseflesh
at the touch of heels
to floor,
the sound
so crisp, distinct,
something he is not, he
is not,
he is erased and re drawn under his sister's Sunday dress
a game, a game, a game,
drawn into the folds every deep hour after school
a game, a game, a game,
except when it isn't.
Eleven. And Mom's dead, and Dad's raising Cain after work,
and Sis is Sis,
and can't be trusted.
The echo of his questions go round round round.
The sound of midnight, the lone ticking of the grandfather clock,
the one peice of real honest to god
furniture
his father's row will allow.
No one watches Adam wait, hold his prayers in the cheek,
faint gloss upon his lips lips.
