Inmate of Happiness

Because you were born with your knees

tied together under you

you are bound to need your hands

and resent my knees. Because

you were born with and without knees

your face remains close to the ground

to analyze all the methods

the medics use to unhook them:

they splint your legs against planks,

numb each knee with a balm

that makes you feel you are flying

through stone. Now you crouch

ready to doubt, blinking because

it is your body’s to blink.

You smile, invincibly obscured.

From any closer I couldn’t take you whole

so you imagine your hands luring

my knees into both sides of your mouth

and open your smile

into a needy room — molded

behind your teeth, a person of pity

held down in thick liquid shame.

Because you were born to be happy

you would skin and uncap

the knee of a good giant

to make yourself a helmet

that could guard you from under

the brain, but you cannot get up off those knees.