Wonderous Creator (I Built you)

I built you in your formidable absence 

In the hushed whisper of your mention behind palms 

I built you from the memorial stained on the walls 

and the fresh paint trying to hide it 

I built you from my mother’s undying infatuation

Her insatiable passion to replace you with anyone even remotely similar 

The shifting mold they never fit but often outgrew anyway 

I watch her cry in her office chair in the corner 

And I wait for you to come back as I built you 

 

I built you from the expressionless portrait hung high in my yellow bedroom 

Each day I study your stiff blue eyes and your nose, round like mine

The tattered wooden frame shadows your soldier’s courage on display behind glass 

I built you from its implied honor, its foreboding promise of loyalty

I tell myself I’m not far apart from you this way

In my silent gaze of the silent photograph 

and I wait for you to come back as I built you 

 

I wait for you in the Polish food my mother cooks 

I wait for you in the cabinets she said you hated being left open 

In the porch you made with stolen wood 

and the house you bought when you still wanted this life 

I wait for you in all of these things 

but you never return for me in any of them 

 

Eventually I pack the portrait away

I disallow you from watching my life from its eyes and change my name 

My deepest faith vanishing almost as quickly as you did 

I purge my yearning for you through daily erasure of my own history 

And a strict regime of self-loathing to keep the emptiness at bay 

 

But when I look back and study this decaying narrative, 

The wreckage of the deserted silhouettes I built your great name upon 

I must admire the decades of my own perverse labor 

You gave me nothing 

And I made it my everything 

What a wonderous creator I am

 

Still even today, 

when I am met in the mirror

And am chanced with your round nose 

And your stiff blue eyes 

Just as hollow as mine 

I must also think 

What a wonderous creator you were too