Marks that Linger Beyond the Questions

(For Virginia Tech.)


I am trying to picture how you all grew from sacred wishes into
sadistic headlines and what you were at each point in between:

Did candles or smiles surround your parents' thoughts that became?
dreams of you and brought the flesh that was delivered and cleaned?

and taken home, perhaps, where you might have played with dolls?
or trucks or both and in the flowers of gardens in dirt in rooms?

tracked with the careless steps of each place your moments emobodied?
And maybe your parents would scold or sigh or spank but always hold?

you as soft as the thought before the moment you were first cleaned?
the scent of melting wax still fresh in the memory of those breaths?

But none of that really matters when I try to picture who he was and why?
he might have wanted to be called question mark and why that makes me?

think only of questions about whether he had the smiling touch?
of parents to greet the softness of his new flesh after he stopped being?

a thought, then a doubt, and then became a child who may not have said?
all that much because he had nothing but questions and felt betrayed?

when nobody answered and stopped playing after he learned to not?
like gardens because maybe he didn't feel clean with a face layered?

with dirt and felt a parent's fist after leaving some trace of his moments?
out in his room that was maybe a little too tidy to be a normal child's?

But none of that matters when I realize I am just picturing and whom-
ever you and he were, you all began and ended as ideas that could have been

anything, but can only be for me questions
that search everywhere for their answers.