ALESSANDRO MERENDINO

growth hormone by puncture

my legs, my arms,
my belly,

a blue grammar
no one taught me to read.

for ten years
growth entered through a pen
under the kitchen light.

the liquid clicked in
with its fluorescent instruction:
grow.
but my body translated
grow as burn.

every three months
the green cup returned.
i drank glucose syrup,
sweet as a lie,
thick as punishment.

then the needle asked my blood
how much of me
was still refusing.

childhood was a height chart,
a waiting room,
cotton wool pressed 
where I had opened.

I was not a boy.
I was bark,
root,
white leaf,

a tree taught upward
from fallow soil.
they called it treatment.
years later,
I am not the tree 
they meant.