Eighty-eight

Content Warning: Violence, PTSD, implied murder I count the steps

leading to the front gate.

It's precisely 88.

Usually I get distracted 

and mess up the routine.

The front porch is splintered,

torn apart by frenemies

and intruders.

The house I inherited

is a home sat in ruins.

Mindless crows and street rats

burst through each door,

purge through rooms

of false devotion.

Knees deep,

I'm sloshing through my father's cataclysmic confessions and my mother's tears of gasoline.

it's only a matter of time before

the ceiling crackles with flames.

The floorboards are worm ridden,

and the portraits are stained magenta.

I can't find my mother's letters.

still the rusty oil lamps flicker.

My father's rifle hangs beside

my mother's faded picture

with a broken trigger.

I love like my father.

I grieve like my mother.

there's no way 

for my fate to alter.

My limbs melt to the wall.

They rest on the weapon,

and my organs meld together

into soundless ammo.

Pretty poetry could fool anybody,

I try to mop the stain off,

but my ancestry's 

rotten burgundy.

I hear the key click into place.

the door creaks.

light pours in.

You say it’s nice to see me again.

(why aren't your glass stained eyes 

scared of my metonymy?)

If I love you 

in the only way I know how to,

do not forgive me. Yathaw San is a 20-year-old poet who is interested in all things grostesque. She lives in Southeast Asia where the culture is clever.