52

You are my shared historian.
We wrote a textbook together of handwritten paper.
You are my shared historian.
You were half of my first kingdom, ally of my first battlefield, truce of my first treaty.
Put that way, it’s all so grown up.
Written like an essay in neat boxed margins about what happened, a clinical analysis of a culture,
Free market systems,
Corruption.
Take a step back and all they were was people in a room, people full of blood using their heads
Like children.
And so we are the children.

You were my shared historian.
His story went something like this:
Once upon a time, forever ended in a deathstroke grandfather clock chiming,
And they lived happily ever after
In my dreams.
You were my shared historian. We wrote all the kingdoms, the battlefields, the treaties.

Cut ties: you are good at deflecting how you are the most important person to you.
It’s inherited.
Grandmother, father, mother, brother,
Poison bones grow old together,
Traits passed down as oral traditions (I mean trauma),
Scars hidden and dealt out as cards,
The names of those who hurt me are so close I carry them in my blood.
Blood, you are my shared historians. What happened is as subjective as the stories;
Are the scars hearts or arrows, shattered glass or flower petals,
To you it didn’t matter as long as the most important person won,
And you won with a mouth full of arrows,
But the stories disagree if the arrows were actually guns.
It’s tradition, to bleed out over the history books.

Cut to the heart: my least favorite kingdom lies within
The tower of cards.
So precarious, those numbers.
I learned to build card castles in third grade, literally,
Metaphorically--
Lean fragile, aching pieces against each other just so, and they will hold up under the weight of worlds.

You were my shared historian.
Mouth full of arrows or guns but definitely blood.
Blood.
You were my shared historian,
Blood.
Were.
So I write this history, alone, cleaning up cards
To remember a better palace
Than the one you still picture.
‘Cause I am stronger together than torn apart.

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