Yolo Chai
Homer About Me
(To my mum)
Myrmidons
I kill an ant because I am angry
and I cry for hours for being a murderer.
I am four years old,
and I will do it again.
You teach me to flood anthills
to see them run. You are
not as good a person as I say you are.
I shorten my name.
I am taller than you, but no matter how tall I get,
you remain indomitable.
The last time that I saw you,
I was a mirror and you were standing in it—
we are separated by a league
and I never reflect enough
to see your face.
You are Achilles, and I am your son.
I tarnish what you started and end my life the way you would have
if you hadn’t died.
You die before I do, yet I die as a footnote in your legacy.
I shortened my name, but my grave still reads:
Neoptolemus,
and the first epitaph on my headstone, before warrior, is:
Son.
Homeward
You brushed my teeth for me when I was a child,
and I didn’t know what you meant every time
you told me that you loved me
until you were too tired.
The rot between my teeth makes water taste like blood,
so does it still matter what I drink? I have never liked
to floss for the same reason that I have never liked
giving back.
I am not the same as you because you grew up in a walnut farming town
and I’m allergic to walnuts. I am not the same as you
because you studied finance after your father asked you to
and I’m studying finance even though I said that I’d never be like you
and now all I’ve proven is that I have no backbone after all. I am not the same as you
because you named yourself at 22 and I named myself at sixteen
and your name is a lot better than mine.
I am not the same as you the way that you are not the same as your own mother
because she was a mooring and you are an anchor
and I am the burn and kiss of a chain.
And I am not the same as you because you didn’t care what your mother said
and whether she was proud of you and
I do.
A mountainscape hangs above our dining table.
I helped you sand down the picture frame, while I argued
about something inane, and it made the painting ugly,
and you loved me still.
There are no photos of people in our house;
we eat dinner without looking each other in the eye;
I wish that I was six years old so that you wouldn’t be able to die.
I say that I’m not sentimental, but I still have your inheritance:
your broken watch that I’m never going to throw away,
seventeen years of what you gave me,
and your eyes.
I think that I prefer you best at arm’s length, where I can show you love
through words rather than actions.
Rage of the Myrmidons
Guilt is a privilege, and to me
it is a birthright.
If you soaked my anger in the Lethe
it would have been enough.
I was born at dawn,
a dream ready to bloom.
Now I am young
trying to keep up with you
and my rage is a setting sun,
and though the fire still elates me,
I suspend my fervid fantasy of greatness
till the heat is but a tepid memory.
When I sleep I stop burning
and when I wake up I am dead.
I am Achilles, and I am your son,
and I am fool enough
to put my trust in rage,
but arrogant enough
to not quite see it.
I tarnish what you started and end my life the way you would have
if you could die.
The earth crumbles to sand where I am buried
from the weight of your blood.
The sea won’t take me
but it beats like a heart on the shore
and the shore is but an outline
but an outline is just a noose.
We drown
in what you say is rain,
but I have been crying long enough
to know the difference.
Yolo Chai has been described as an office worker multiple times by multiple people.