Grease Angels

You gnawed on lamb bone, teeth yet to push

through your gums, where I choked up water,

Mom behind me with the pump to my feeding tube.

This life, jabbed into me like a garden

hose, while you bound toward its gushing mouth,

kicking up Georgia mud on your yellow crocs.

You sucked the blue marrow of sky clean;

I picked at the fat of clouds with a fork.

When the history teacher handed me my D-

face up, patted the shoulders of two white boys

who flanked me, their arms a fleshy pink,

bare as a flamingo’s leg where the sleeves

of their baseball jerseys ended, said, If you want

to learn how to write, ask these boys, I sat

with my throat clenched, heaving from this life

I’d been given, and you, when you were given

a detention while playing frisbee at lunch, you typed

out an email that read, I don’t give a fuck.

You stood still while the coyote circled you

at the shore of the lake, your feet no bigger than

its paw, the jammy orange of sun spilling

through trees. You poured a gallon of cooking oil

on the kitchen floor, blotting it with grease

angels, because you thought you were slick.

Our heads hung in the glow of the fridge, we

left sticky notes on Mom’s fried chicken

legs at night. The fridge light was your halo.

You make the tender parts of me sing.

You make me want to leave the floors unscrubbed

just to keep the part of you you left behind.