90's Baby

How long will it take before I disappoint you, before your opinion of me changes? You know I'm controlled by my emotions, as my old wounds reopen. I jump off roofs into accidental circumstances, into frank confessions, into episodic and contextual details, into rapid mood changes and drawn out sentences. My legs meet the shallow ground, the summer of 2009 when I went searching for blue rocks at the peak of Ben Lomond. How could I forget the seizures, the lazy days in silk bed sheets? I went to the end of rivers to understand the physics of moon songs, the clouds bursting open with water music. On our trip I was the last to cross the finish line, all too aware of my size, my blood type. When I was eleven my eyes opened, the first time I explored my body and felt what it was like to be a boy. Those initial touches were magical pulses, as memorable as my grandmother's homemade soup. I never could have known how the years would be bittersweet, and leaving them behind was like taking a baby from the tip of the breast. I never could have known. I never could have imagined the birth of my sisters, what it feels like to grow up without a father, what it feels like to be loved by my mother.