I will never discharge — the terms of my parole written before I was born. I'd like to say I'm sorry — but I'm not. You’ve made me, are making me now. And shouldn’t you be ashamed, gorging on my exile, as I pace and froth in the white spaces between lines, our supposed origin inscribed in a childhood file beneath a mother’s tongue, yet I've found that file forged, pages and pages of smooth reasons without center. And so, at your silent request, I return to the scene of my crime, this gentle page, softly filling up. At these times my chest tightens, adrenaline coats my throat as I wait to be re-arrested for stealing a little breadloaf of meaning, all those other connotations starve.

Dear anonymous reader I confess — just a little applause dissolves me, enough to leave you this — my amputation, my discarded prosthesis. But even this metaphor, text-as-body, will fail you. Ha ha. The inside/outside will decay. Ha. One moment soon, you may join me. And so I put it to you — what am I to be?