Alone, like a stranded morsel of bread,
in a park where pigeons have grown teeth,
“you’re marching on a faulty staccato”, she said,
“you half-burnt crust with no dough underneath”.

And it hurt, you know, on that bench, lonely,
with those pigeons ripping my slabs of flesh,
feeling the eyes of my fate like a folly;
a heart leaking through this life of mesh.

At my birth, no fairies; my lot was a fury,
with iridescent curves, like those carnivore pigeons,
with a sentence of “guilty” from a grand jury,
paying the price of a swan’s ambitions.

I was raised in a tavern by falling leaves,
with lullabies painted in colours of autumn,
son and daughter in a coat without sleeves,
a fallen Pantheon’s last bastard column.