ghosts around the kitchen table | a poem rereading your body

you moved from one home to the next

and I understood that the world is a ghost town

*

you were scared of what I couldn’t see

*

I was born tense

I was born, muscles contracting

I was born expecting a fight

my father’s face undone by death threats

*

create a world apart

but nothing else had ever existed in his head

*

he confronts ghosts

revisits the lost past

recreates himself in his mind

and nobody takes part

nobody sees a thing

the past stays the past

and he is stuck but feels like he’s doing something

peace is out of reach

money has spoken

*

there’s a big picture

and there is one detail amongst the many

that acts like an avalanche

and I was told to stop digging

*

and I learned that, with you,

I must believe what I’m not hearing

*

I disengaged because you were never real

*

when you attacked us,

you had your forefathers behind your back

*

I’ve never seen their faces

but I’ve received their beatings

*

spectres with lost causes

raised me with loose hopes

and violence unfinished

*

you were taught that your body should hurt

and you added language to be lethal

*

there are ruins of history

and then there’s history invented