You’ll need a silver knife to kill me love

My whole family is full of monsters

My sister who nurses the snakes inside her head,

Keeps statues of the men she destroys,

Hurt so young and so often that poison

Tastes like benediction

Till she dies, she’ll spread her gospel.

And me, the changeling, who goes anywhere,

Who collects trust like currency to spend,

Like two gold coins to be laid over the eyes of the blind,

Who promises, promises, that he will be there

Who vanishes when he is wanted

Because I learned early that people always leave

And I am a person, or I am trying to be.

Our father who always smiled

Even when he threw his heavy hands,

Even when he crept into our bedrooms.

They never made a legend out of him.

We tell our children the monsters

only want to kill them

Because we can’t tell them the truth

Because a beautiful thing twisted

is far worse than an ugly thing being itself.

If we had our way the world would burn

And we’d watch from the front yard

Of the house we ran from,

No stone left unturned,

No promise left unbroken.