think. mama: where do you bury

rage and what if i'm tired of everything.

you said don't let this screw you up. you said

richard you're losing her you're losing your daughter.

mama my daddy hit me his hand pressed into my face

i spun and screamed and he hit me again. i called your name

begging you to keep him from killing

me. you protected me by putting an entire car

between us. a week later i still have marks in my face

from where his knuckles

sliced into my cheek as if it were a piece

of dough--soft, and fragile.

in the night last night

or was it today in class i can't remember

i woke up in a half dream half crying

groped my daddy induced knot

on my face hands shaking

this is a daddy

induced nightmare.

classmates keep asking what's wrong

i'm just tired, didn't sleep for a few days and

i mean this is true, i must say, but i am also disconnected

from thought, a human body bruised but fully functional, i

mean after daddy there is no meaning to language

or syncopating syllables but in its stutter

my beastly social hierarchy urges me, dictates me

to move faster move normally stretch your smile

across your pulsing cheekbone but i can't.

and this is not a metaphor for sadness or loneliness.

see i have trouble shedding my father and his snakeskin

scratches and ambien nostrils and bacardi fangs.

this secondhand smoke can't demarcate my breath

it's daddy's breath i feel on my neck, curled baby hairs asleep

oh the tenderness

of this narrative: a fifteen year old me w/ my family burning

pawning myself off to whoever walks by: boys

still like you as long as you cover the mascara tears

with some natural looking makeup and go down on them.

i think at one point, i don't really remember, i

was innocent. i couldn't make sense of grandma's

suicide and her bullet hole necklace or daddy's

love of prosecco and prescription pills. imagine

me now: half feral half divine, tumultuous

river of venomous words and shotgunned beer cans

nicotine viper and hissing mental breakdowns:

girl. or corpse