Trying to Escape Autobiography

The truth is sticky. --Nine-year-old girl

You would slide to a bluer place
or colorless. Write a cloud poem
mothers read rocking away evenings.
Boneless as cats dreaming or faceless
pictures a child connects dot-to-dot in his mind.

But truth glues itself to the back
of your eyes. Just when you thought
you'd wiped the table clean, your elbow
catches in a smear of it.

This is the clasp and leech of real.
Mucilage. The daily molasses.
And who has dipped my wings in syrup
while I slept? asked the moth, breathless.

You want those made-up people.
But they limp your cousin's limp.
Every scent your mother's.
Each breath your father's last wheeze.
Bones clank through your poems,
their marrow sticky, dripping.