When I was 35, I went to my ‘uncle’s’ 50th

in his seventies house with a brown wall

of books. I’d never been there before.

I watched my 12 year old ‘cousin’ having

a melt-down, and my ‘aunt’ –  my ‘uncles sister’ –

sat him down on the step of the split-level living room.

Her husband and daughters hovered; they talked

in whispery voices. That nuclear family

seemed separate from me, and separate

from the rest of the ‘family’.

 

Throughout the evening, my ‘uncle’s wife’,

my other ‘cousins’, my ‘brother’ and

my ‘sister’ with her flicking teenage eyes

gave me light touches, asking

if I was all right. I danced all night,

limbs crazy-expressive because my tongue

was tied.

 

My red-headed ‘cousins’ had organised

a book of poems, a gift for their father. At some point

I wrote my school song in it, a conservative hymn,

thinking about how I sang it on road trips

with old friends, out loud out of tune but with ownership

for the place I’d lived from my birth

until this place now that

radiated something despite myself, I was part of,

I was generating.

 

The next day, they all went to a cafe. I only remember

the chatter filling the high ceiling, and the sobbing

that rose from somewhere I couldn’t stop.

She took me to our own table, away from the others, She

took my hand, She said it was okay, and still

I couldn’t call her by that name that filled my mouth

because it already belonged to another.