Disconnected Inheritance

Kit-Xgwelemc Kennedy

every man has pieces stripped

away by his father

from the first moment of his life.

so he walks around lonely

touching whatever skin

he can. passing through: a ghost.

all of them tell me i am ghostly

while their hands strip

my clothes fingers missing my skin

eyes hiding from some invisible father.

they split right after—God it's lonely

moving through this life.

right in the centre there are a few moments of life

where reality breaks down the ghost

and neither of us has ever been alone.

flesh can (will) be stripped

away from bone. he becomes a priest

pouring holy sweat on my skin.

each time i climb back into this skin

the motion induces the decay of another half-life.

i try not to reflect on my father

but there, in the corner: he's the ghost.

even if i take the paint on the walls and strip

it off, he's marked there a lone

reminder that i am accompanied and alone.

i cannot separate his dna from my skin.

i try to strip

his hair from my scalp, but it's alive

and grows again its ghost

strands blocking my eyes. still i see the father

so, i move out west even farther:

into the ocean. it freezes out the loneliness

the very thing is earth's ghost,

filled by primordials with thick blubbery skin

creatures that sink their whole lives

who pick the death from me until my bones are stripped.

finally i forget every father. unburdened of my skin,

unburdened of loneliness, disinherited from life.

i won't be excavated when the ghost of earth is stripped.