/ˈɡænɪmiːd/ 
i. Greek god (in this poem cyborg) —A Trojan boy who was
abducted, and ultimately became immortal in order to be 
Zeus’s (in this poem His country’s) cupbearer. 
ii. A boy (in this poem cyborg) kept for pederastic purposes.

An alienated memory synapses in my cerebrum.

I’m a stranger in my own body. I write from a land

that knows havoc. And I’m trying to understand

the language of wailing. A cyborg whispers 

love into my ear. & it resonates with my heartbeat.

Sometimes, I feel loose like an uncaged bird,

I whisper love back to him. Sometimes,

I try to pass my forefinger through his pupil,

to touch the lights on his retina. But his light 

wasn’t beauty. It was catastrophe, it was fire

burning the photographs of his memories—all the

boys his country had exterminated for loving boys.

When he’s drowsy, he doesn’t sleep.

Because he dreams of them, their deaths.

He dreams of the future and always

clamours that an inferno is near—an apocalypse.  

No chance the love he whispered into my ear was

literally love. Perhaps, an enchantment. A yen for

salvation. & what is salvation if not a cup-

bearer who only wants to drink & be filled

with affection. The thirst of his desires,

quenched. & if you’d look more closely, 

you’d see that a new fire ignites where the smoke

of the old one ends. That every man is a burning 

tree in the middle of a desert. That the only way 

out of your body is undiscovered—nobody wrote 

how. No cartographer sketched the map. No anatomist

found the door. No one ever tried to. No one paid 

attention to the body. How soft & easily it could 

break. How we might need to modify it in every 

century to match its contemporary disasters. 

Even the drone never saw this coming. That a country

would evolve into a minotaur that eats a boy  

for loving another boy. I mean, wasn’t love meant

to be a choice? I tell the cyborg we are damned. & we both

know it. So, I whispered love into his ear. & it resonated

with his eyes. When I touched his retina,

the fire was gone. Now, I could see the real

him—pretty as an araracanga. His eyes, glowing

with many colours, there’s no way, no fucking way

this isn’t true love.