remix

the floor is rotting out 
in my parent's bathroom. 
we will be staring down
into the living room.
i remember once as a kid
i filled the bathtub up
to the brim. made myself 
a soup bone. spilled water & 
it leaked through the ceiling
soaking the couch where my father was
trying to get the football players
to hear him. sometimes the remix
is better than the original
which is either a joke about 
me being trans or a joke about
the sorry state of the radio
or the truth about aging. 
i am going to be thirty soon
which i never intended. 
sometimes in my parent's house
i will consider all the work
that needs to be done. the wires
my father strung with his friends
that short circuit & sputter. 
the stairs that have rotted 
& broken off the deck. recently, 
they redid the living room.
painted the walls a deep blue. 
i still hear the orange & the green
humming beneath. the first 
song is always there. a hand inside
a glove. our house, always 
the doll place where we tried
to become humans. plates broken
on the speckled red kitchen floor.
their shards turning into teeth. 
turning into mountains. we are people
who keep as much as we can
& as little as we can. the remix maybe
not the art of change but the art
of preservation. my remixed face
& my remixed mouth. if i am 
being honest i don't want anything 
to change in my parents' house. 
if i am being honest i want the hole
to bloom in the floor. to see 
right through this creature. my family
there, still watching the tv.
our little terrarium at the edge of town.