I capture the cradle
wherein the proof of my wound         a bootstrap

holding old leather together         I

enter into distended time
In this figuring, nostalgia baptises a fatalism

of the unwelladjusted           
                                    I catch myself

         saying sex is sexless in a dreamworld

         of my own making
If he hit me, sir, I allege a fistful of ponytail

marble benchtop too rich for babybaby teeth

a hot wet mouth though I could not write

have one’s way with         the lampshade

dimming slowly & time unmoving clockwise

through the logics of length
He assails reason with his love of smallerhands,

smallerteeth, growths unmeriting agelessness
         timid by the skin of my undressing

         I—a mouthful of girlskin         wading

         through the water of want
What does it mean to muzzle myself

in the means of my yesteryears        to trust wake

from violence of verb	           to unloosen his vice

from the pronouncement of a birthright?
I carve pits from peaches, ingest them whole,

learning to crave that fruit without no
untouching the softskin of lovers, maul the distance

where fireflies have taken to meat
         To countenance my deletion, the order of his dead

         vernacular a pin passed through patella

         keeping fixed the knelt bruises
         mouth as o to say i’m okay
Mourning now, pills spill ink over organ

to spell out testimony, the unkept remembrances

of my deepest hours, wrecking and repentance
         These declarations         an ancestry
         his touch                           a birthmark