I 

I was created in lieu of a debt / in lieu of a life spent in the fields
           Spun like cotton yarns on fingers that cannot / the red bird croaks, left alone from its pack
            Own wool, that cannot afford skin or flesh / the red bird looks me in the eye, shifts on its foot 

For overgrown fields and pinpricked fingers, I was sold— / I search the red bird in every sky 

In hearts made of words, made of paper      / in pictures made of coal, made of grey lead
     I was sold                           / I was sketched
In photographs made of ink, made of paint   / in lovers made of unborn skin, made of wounded genitals
     I was advertised                  / I was formed  

Tell me if it is fair to blame another for the mistake of your blood / the red bird sings with  

                       syllables askew in its mouth and an armour coiled around its breast 

I am born from genitals considered in normalcy / the red bird is lonely as a feather on the ground 

My own body is not normal; it is a pockmarked portrait of organs undone / the red bird pecks on a grain / you will never understand my body simply because you have never possessed it / the red bird— 

II  

I am chained to my body / to the structure of my genitals / the red bird is flame against the stars  

When I am looked at / nude as a body on sculptures from the renaissance / a time when my body would’ve been seen as witchcraft / burnt like meat on a grill / it reeks of spoiled fruit, the red bird, of cherries and mangoes in dust  

                                  I want my body to change; it is a prayer, but I am as idle as a wounded man, thrashing and sprawled on grass like a dying soldier / the red bird falls from the sky and into a bale of hay  

I am put forth for his pleasure / I am a body made for sex / my organs are distorted / a kink  

            Is a letter enough evidence of my knowledge? / I want to be known for more than my body  

                The night falters like dancers on a slippery stage / it falls, regains its posture, aches against the moonless expanse / I am in the bedroom, disrobed / a blush creeps up my skin / a rash  

I am his because I was sold / it is a fact; I have resigned to it / colours like mine cannot thrive / bodies like mine could only survive this way / I know because I was told so 

III 

When the genitals are cut / for examination / for studies on the bodies of abnormal humans
placed on walls / showcased on shows / held in jars with liquid that looked like piss / the red bird awakens, a fistful of paper coiled into its chest, fragile as hollowed-out glass bottles
In freak shows / in circuses / in experiments / in portraits / the red bird rises from an ocean of sand
Bodies like my own are displayed / cut at the tip, stretched, touched like a black candle in a church / poked, beaten, stitched at the end after a festering wound swallows the skin / and the red bird’s song aches at my chest

Genitals bleed / genitals move like a second mouth
Mine aches every night after I am touched / mine hurts every time I try to sing
There is blood on my underwear, blood on my chest / he says he doesn’t mind the blood
I want to be like him / but the hurt is a constant, still as glass windows when being wiped  

IV 

I am named after a curse / I am lucky as a forest in a city
In paintings and poems, I am trashed / in forests I echo like there are a dozen of my kind looking for my body / like the song of the red bird was embroidered into my chest / like a tattoo / like a brand
My body is thrown on sidewalks / my body is set on fire / bodies like mine aren’t allowed to exist in real life / I am only made for a book / for a story to be read / for curiosity / for laugh / the red bird—

My body is a sacred tomb / my body is a temple of unsaid prayers / I am a prayer I tell myself to avoid everyone else / do I only say this for I can never swap my body for another’s?  

                                   I was given a choice at birth / to show my body
Or to let it belong to someone else / I felt it wasn’t my decision to make / so I let father make it
 

V 

Am I in the wrong to hate the one that possesses my body? Is it fear to question the sinner?
       I feel I walk untrodden paths to see where they lead / to possess some of the curiosity others have for my body / my skin was only constructed as an afterthought / I was created to form the paper
that holds his heart still / filtering his blood

He owns me because I am to not own myself       / I am a boy with simple wishes
I am led to believe it is safer for him to own me than anyone else         / I am told a boy belongs to his family until he is sold
I am led to believe it is the only way I could get a job      / a boy that stays in the fields and the bedrooms, a boy that cannot enter the kitchen  

Of course, he is surreal / he’s only created to remember my body / the red birds splits the sky in two, spills across the translucent clouds like sputtering blood 

He is a mind; he is thoughts and feelings that filter the heart of its blood / the red bird swims between white clouds / he is a sinner for he owns my body; I am a sinner for I let him do it / the red bird exists  

In the bedrooms, my body is given to him in a platter, like I am food / the red bird pecks at my scarlet-stained cheek / I am a fruit / I am a tumbler of turmeric milk / I am food stored in metal boxes
 

VI 

In dreams, I own him / the grass sweeps across the soil like little moving soldiers
He belongs to me because I belong to him / the wind hushes like a mother to a child
He owns other boys like me / I work because it is worse for others; it is unsafe outside the house and the fields / unsafe outside the bedrooms  

To the disillusioned mind, to the dissociative mind / the red bird is paint splashed across the sky  

I belong to him because of cash, because of the colour of my skin, because of the look of my genitals / the twisted red bird sings with emotion; it loans its voice out for me once 

His body is made of floating heat and whispers, of the cry of cicadas when they are warring between themselves / I sing with the voice I am given; the red bird beats against my chest like a  

                     second heart   

VII 

Are lovers formed or created? I feel I am out of touch with love / when I drank from the breasts of my mother, she sealed my fate for me / sweat hung on skin like syrup / the red bird kisses me  

Father chose best for me /  

                                  I know because he said so / the red bird is a poem written on sky with rain  

To be owned is better than to be displayed / I know / the red bird screeches,  

                                                                         becomes still as the dead 

I am not to speak until I am summoned to / he is war in a person / his body is liquid in a bottle  

He instructs me while I work / screams, squashes a bug / after some time, I find the dead bug and nurse it to life / he interrupts me when I— / the bug earns back its life and flees from my palm  

He tells me to pray every night / I remember mother praying for my body to shift, for my genitals to conform to the normal / do prayers ever work?  

VIII 

The other boys lurk somewhere close / the red bird soars
The other boys aren’t allowed to be around each other / the red bird knocks against the clouds like they are doors to afterlife
The other boys don’t talk to anyone but the one who owns us / the red bird lives, breathes, aches; it is as human as I am

I want to press my fingers to his chest / let the blood flow between my fingers / squeeze
his heart like a cheesecloth with oat milk when mother made it in the warm wound of our kitchen / let the blood sting at my slit wrists / tied with a cloth to the bedpost / squeeze
Mingle with my own / his heart
 

IX 

Am I to never hate the one that owns my body? / for me it is to give up my body / to love the one that owns me / my body for money, for what I can give in the bedroom and what I can do in the mornings
For me it is to kiss his lips and feel mine instead / to caress his skin to feel my own / squeeze / break his muscles in two while he splits open my lip with his tongue  

He is ashes / he is the cork that holds my life to a close / the red bird scratches its black beak on glass 

He is the colour of the night as I am touched / the bed roils, bodily fluids askew / the red bird is a warning / I want to ask the bird what it means, but it is a pointless affair / he is the walls of my room that is padded with hay / I am like an animal / the red bird feasts on what is left of my food, painfully quiet  

X 

I was formed in lieu of contempt / in lieu of a life well lived
Arranged like organs in a lab / moulded between hands like dough / wheat for eyes and nose and lips / in glass jars, I exist / in piss-coloured liquid, I float 

I cannot speak when I will to / my mouth is his to own / my tongue the yarn he weaves  

                        between his teeth 

Words only form at my tongue when I / open my mouth and / kiss him 

Is it wrong for your body to want to never belong to another? / my flesh is liquid; my skin is ice
I cannot reclaim a body that isn’t mine / my body is metal in a furnace / the red bird croaks, hums
I am the ash under the burnt remains of human skin / I am a bird in the sky, only the sky is my cage and / the red bird and its fluttering wings twitch
Body of his my freedom / I watch the red bird and imagine myself in the cage of the sky / it flees from his sight / I want to fly as well