and they appear from the under-eaves. A litter of women
herding toward the full-stop of his name. Tall,
pretty, they are stained with his sweat too.
I say his name and pull strands of other women’s hair
from my mouth. All of us dusked and outstretched,
lapping at our wounds. One of them yanking his tooth
from her thigh, another flinching at blue-birds, trying
to remember what isn’t dangerous. Look
at the batch of us he devoured two by two. How he found
us like a bomber’s screen scanning the land
for human heat– reaching down for us under the heel
of his boot. One, with the scent of him still
stinking off of her, sobs out a full cask of wine.
Look at what he made brick by brick,
a parade of fraying, a brothel on our breath, dresses tailored
to fit an unnamed grief. We know what it means
to jewel out our doubt in a thick, silent shucking. What
happened? What happened? That sulfur residue
of match-light. Here we are. The girl with a spine like a church
staircase, the girl who snapped like a guitar string.
And the last one he sought out to look just like me. Beaten
into the same speech impediment, wearing my face
like a bathrobe. I say his name and here we are. Here we are.