Revised older poem

Lorna, A minor

We spoke in strangled English
after belted with the garden hoe.
Conceived in cafeterias (hush!),
we were commas tossed through the fleshy O.

Soon the sky was redder than hellish russet,
and Grandpa's pills were gone in a week.
I begged you not to cross it
out, the sentence I sharpied on the back

of your pink and black ledger, where life
found language in shitlists and shades
of private anguish, as if
life was there only to rip you to shreds.

You were born in 1982
to red-eyed equines caked in frost
When you were eight you killed a cockatoo,
my love for you the cost.