I can still feel the pattern and divots of your distain under my fingers,

Generational trauma woven into a rug I played on in your living room as a child.

Your disgust kept down every feeling and every inch of anaglypta, as if the tacky wall covering wasn’t hiding enough.

The only love you had to give you handed to me as toy cars, humbugs and polo mints retrieved from deep within the sideboard.

The velvet curtains holding onto every cigarette and secret incase you needed them later, green corduroy beneath your rumps holding up far less than your shoulders ever did.

Tell me you’re tired, tell me how all this fear camouflaged as hate is a waste of our time. Tell me as you close your eyes how you cannot hate what you have never loved.