Child

At the top of the house tonight in a room I once lived in, the slant ceiling hunches over and the square-shouldered doorway cants his enormous empty body to my sight and no angles are true: nothing obeys the plumbline and tape; worn tile warps in distress at hot and cold, old windows of bad glass change the laws, and there are strange animals, the alien toys of a child, and there is the child smell: have you ever heard them before they’re human, before we teach them everything?—have you ever heard them?—they laugh like they’re outside— whole skull humming in their animal— listen! we must make them human— they could be these other things—I remember through this bad glass when I wasn’t human— I remember when I was connected— telephone and powerline, table and chair, all, the chaos and the light, the whole, hydrogen and helium, the sun of total confusion

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