My face became a sunlight zone with flowers known and unknown. I’ve become my own path, blooming with brambles and vines. The candle’s an easel, and the flame, a canvas. The rain across my eyes feels like it could fill the Atlantic but made breaking ground easier. Relatives told my mom to end gestation; tectonic plates slipping under familial weight. My older cousin said: you always seem deep in thought. If only she could meet the former versions of myself I’ve fought. Mom and her girlfriend, [REDACTED], drank and played cards in the kitchen. Dad took odd jobs and randomly brought me with him. Soon, I was too far gone. My childhood was spent compartmentalizing events I somehow survived. Years later, before I became unhoused, I visited a Zen monastery. A nun led us in chanting: I’m letting go, I’m letting go, I’m letting go. The levees flooded; I grasped who I was and wasn’t. The fortress, built by my own hands, had to be razed.
J.L. Moultrie’s work has appeared in Hobart Pulp, ExPat Press, Apocalypse Confidential, Bruiser Magazine, Do Not Submit, and Bizarre Publishing House. He is the author of the poetry collection Cairn.