We Never Buried My Umbilical Cord

I.
I like the saline taste
when I’m hiding under hospital sheets
pulling the i.v. needle from my broken vein
and sipping the bittersweet solution desperately.

My mother idealized me
and when I woke up
having deconstructed my mask
with cocaine and alcohol
I thought I had lost myself
but I am just a name
never having known my arm
from the Chagall paintings in LACMA.

I was only a slightly innocent child.

II.
Dad and I came home at 10.
He had sword wounds
and I marveled at his injuries.
His purple bloody fingers
made me proud.
Sifu would give me chocolates
to make up for this
as I watched Dad flirt with a student.

As we drove to Korea Town
in his white convertible
we listened to the Beach Boys
and I thought he loved me
like other Dads.

He wanted to teach me skills
and keep a distance
while loving me.
I was his black belt in training.
We ate junk food together
and had dinner with his mistresses.

I think the lawsuit fucked
our fake family over.
His half-secrets were revealed
and he fled to Europe
leaving rich gossip stories
for America’s Chaos Theory community.

I was taken from Los Angeles suburbia,
my silk worms, snails, pool and backyard
and brought to a place of disordered chaos.
Dad refused to buy pots and tables,
content to sparsely furnish a flat
with few reminders as possible.

He’s still there
and now that I am older
I miss the days we dined
with his many women.

I visited one in Boston
wearing his hopeless promise
and I don’t think she knows
he’ll never change.

III.
Samantha was a model
of grace and beauty
but we all get a little nicked eventually.

Bipolar evenings spent
shrieking at the pooling puddle
of blood on our bathroom floor
reminded me of my grandfather
shooting the coon hounds next door.

I was immobile when
my mother called the ambulance.
We spent an evening listening
to the shrieks of a man
in the next hospital room
and trying to calm
the permanent nerves we acquired.

I can’t look at blood.
It conjures memories
of white coats,
chinatown mental institutions,
driving with Daniel for my daily visit
equipped with Pocky
and the intense anxiety
that everything will be wiped clean.

Nothing is permanent
and everything will be taken away
as I lay still on my bed,
imagining myself kicking and screaming.

IV.
I remember crawling
up an ivy hill
at the Los Angeles Zoo.
I crossed a wooden bridge
in the meadow
listening to my sister call my name
but I didn’t return.