Exoskeletons for Children

Your home taught me to smile wide
And show all my teeth
Display anything vaguely sugary
Your home is a churning in the stomach
An unrest in the chest
Your home is straight out of central casting
There is a lot of space for mediocre white men
You are sharpening our picket fence
You say it’s to defend ourselves
The family room is like a lion’s mouth
I like what you did with the place
You really made it ours
We live in a haunted house of mirrors
I pay good money for my room
I pay in blood for this womb
But i tiptoe through my own kitchen
There are scary things around
Wearing human costumes
Let’s build exoskeletons for children
Let them know we got their backs
Let them know we got their noses
Let them know we got their pinkies ‚Äôtil they crack
So, I am building a brand new ruin
And what you’ve been doing?
That year I spent all summer on bloody knees
Taking pebbles from graves
Tangled up in possibilities
Getting the ringing in my ears engraved
And once you open your eyes it’d hard to unsee
That the stains stains stains are everywhere
There’s significance
In stabbing someone with a pencil
There’s ignorance
In every brick of the home
There’s brilliance
In the unsentimental
There’s brilliance
In the unsentimental
(and we’re outta here
We name ourselves
And we tattoo it under the skin of our hands)
Let’s build exoskeletons for children
Let them know we got their backs
Let them know we got their noses
Let them know we got their pinkies til they crack