Dublin, 1999: Fist Fights First, then I Fly

What we had was a chipped tooth
and the blood stains visible on the ground.
No one moved into the kitchen
in order to get away;
Mama let dinner burn, boil, bury
itself into the pans, inedible;
Father pulled in his pipe, slowly, shaking fist pains out;
and I,
I tasted the pooling blood pillowing my head,
a rock at the edge of a rose-pedaled bed;
no one cleared their throats, coughed, sighed
away the awkward silence.
The wooden wind stood still;
the air was the density of water;
I am floating above this Grand Scene;
have forgotten what the pain in my gums feels like,
what the mixture of spit and blood tastes like;
I can’t see the roof from here
which means I can no longer see you;
we are not in the same room, anymore,
my sister Amy is crying
because she knows that I will not wake from
the bloody bed my father has made me;
No one else is as far away from below as I am,
I am flying towards the bigger picture-
the end that I have tied to my beginning-
most of the time too afraid to look down
at the villages, the cities, the tractors and the trucks
that all line up like ants
with no where to go.