Never Called Son

I was a middle child, the middle of three unwanted children Our mother was English, an actress, who had the misfortune of loving our father, who abandoned us We were all partitioned out to whoever would take a toddler or an infant when our mother died. Yes, our mother had chosen very poorly. I was a ward of a couple who traded slaves, a couple who never adopted me, never called me son. I was an interloper, spoiled one minute, mistreated and harshly disciplined the next. According to my master's whims. His wife was silent, she did not care, she was not my mother. My first book of poems was like me. Nameless. I actually made sure the by-line did not have a name. I treated it with contempt, a contempt I understood. I did not belong to anyone. The book was like me, un-named, un-claimed, lost. It did not do well. I continued living on my five dollars a week salary. At 27, I laid with my 13-year-old cousin. We call this child abuse now; in 1836, it was called marriage. She belonged to me. I was no longer alone. My wife passed before she was 30; at least she lived long enough to see one of my poems published and positively received. It was different, interesting, to readers, macabre. I died at 40; causes unknown. Possibly because no one cared enough to find out what finished me. Some said heart disease, others suicide, some cholera, others drugs. What matter? I was dead wasn't I? Dead, as the raven in my story, dead and gone, forevermore. It seems peculiar now that I matter more today than I did when I was alive.