Giovanni De Lanoy
Three AM.
The burn of a roar an hour past.
It began with the phrase:
“Lord, at least give me the dignity of pants.”
But what could ever be presentable
About painting the walls brown and orange
With your breath.
I pray
At the altar of privacy
Between screams:
“Lord, let me not wake him up.”
Yet you cry so for him to wake, child.
“Lord, what did I do to deserve this?”
My sour compression is too loud
And I do not hear its response.
I look
Upon my creation with squinting
Eyes. It is pungent
In the way that only a part
Of me can be. I am
Within my own hair, binding it.
“Enough,” I think, “Samson’s
Story always ends.”
And so a flood
That brings beginnings
In scrubbings along ridge lines and cracks
Gives me pause.
This cannot be all I am,
Just a mess to be wiped away with bleach.
And so, amidst personal filth, I write
“Three AM.”