a man who knew my father befriended me
causing me to question the nature of my reality,
my history, its validity,
my possibly-false memories
— all, viewed through the lens
of the person
who had a vested interest in
indoctrinating me,
who preferred my naïveté,
under the guise of protectivity,
Christmas break, age 6, Waukegan, Illinois
see,
parents will inscribe stories on the folds of a child’s cerebrum,
their pens then go unchallenged
until they’re challenged /
their ink is like cord blood,
except,
it can re/generate — or damage
but it takes just one person
to crack open their engineered sky,
then, we —
as forced astronomers,
will spend our lives
begging these zealots
the non-answerable:
“but why?”
