Geppetto’s Other Boy

My father makes my face out of wet stone rubbed with indigo, my ears made from spider webs. A few light years for the eyes, he says. Now I can blink an afterlife. He puts a sparrow in my mouth, a teaspoon of lithium that gives me dreams about a girl made of orange rinds and coffee. My veins are made of blue worms dug up after a hail storm. The distance from my bedroom window to the morning star is measured by a long poem called “Once, I Watched Her Ride a Horse.” Kirkegaarde, my father  mumbles, existential liar! He is almost done. Give me twilight, father, some wilderness and gold. But he adds a clock in a doorway in my chest. Tick. Tock.