Cloud

To the person I could ask a billion questions—
I want to ask and never stop. I want to know
where to start because I have mostly questions, 
and accusations—too many to count, so 
are you the right person to ask?  

When I was five, I learned what sarcasm was. I impressed
my parents, became prodigious, and can you see how I now
regret it, see it like a contingent shell outstretched before my heart—
one atop the other? That shell depended on an unsnapped chain of stories I made up,
became calm in its position, defending the links I welded together, confident 
in every one.  

Can you
see the times I broke into a dozen slivers of cloud vapor?
I whipped around, an angry wind I conjured from being fatherless—
all while a father sat beneath the floorboards, tapping out. 
You can answer my questions about where he started and why 
he stopped, why I forget his name 
when signing my own, forget his face when he hugs me. 
You can trace back a string of links I call mine and see why I lost 
its beginning, where it lives outside of its tangles because in my head, 
there is a string that must defeat some principle of reason
and I am banking on you knowing more than me, on seeing the purpose
of that string’s existence and why I have these questions, where they started, 
for you to see that I will have to stop some time, because a billion questions
is not infinite questions, so I will have to stop asking at one billion, and really, is that enough?

I don’t know.
Is it enough?

I am confident my chain is rusting under the tears of a billion,
unanswered questions and my shield is shaking in a different kind of wind now.
I can laugh at the concept of helplessness in a father and a mother’s plea for leniency
—perhaps that’s my sarcasm dressed up in white robes—
but I don’t care for confidence. 
I just want to know who can answer my billion questions,
which are actually just one big and unbound question…

So do you know who I can ask?