Make me more woman, give me
lipstick on my teeth and press rouge into my cheeks.
Teach me how to curl my hair with rags and bobby pins,
tell me that my hair is my “feature”, meaning
girls like me don’t have a lot going for them.
Spit on me, make me into a pillar of salt because I turn around
when men scream at me on my way home from work.
Make me strong woman: make me spew fire when he calls me a *****, when he
messes up my curls, ******, when
I cannot bear to wake up in my body anymore. Make
my stretch marks unfurl like orchids, please make me love
tending to this garden body.
Make me believe somebody else loves tending to this.
Make me woman, give me the sacred feminity that
only my mother understands, when I
watched her do her makeup as a child.
Make me love my cupboard-mouth crammed full of broken ceramic.
Make the stained-glass faces of magazine covers something I could
perhaps assimilate to.
But I find it important to note that
my hands have held the wrinkled Haitian ones that told me I was an angel,
the tear-tracked ones with chipped nail polish and a stillborn baby,
the frantic ones that were riddled with panic.
And in those moments, I felt woman, but somehow I am not yet
woman enough, not strong enough, not
enough.

The fingernail moon illuminates the inky black evening
while barren tree branches scratch and poke at the windowpanes.
The letter he wrote for you neatly sealed in its envelope in the dark
of your room, in the corner mostly, where wind
and spooky spirits congregate and flow
in grand swirls like the divine milk (it tells things to you) in your teacup.

It would seem that the whimsy and love letters that appear in your teacup
are insufficient in relaying your message, instead your voice gets lost in the evening.
You try to stutter out how you haven’t opened it, how words don’t just flow
from your pen like they flow from his, how the paper-airplanes he’s tossed you just clunk on the windowpanes
and they do not enter inside, although you sort of wish they did, but the wind
is not strong enough to compel you to throw him a paper-airplane response in the dark.

It is too much to talk to him, too much to throw your worries into his dark
heart and have them go from vibrant to stone cold in his grasp, and the prospect of it all makes your teacup
shake and tremble in your pale weak hands, pale like paper, paper that can just blow away in the wind
like it was nothing. You reminisce of warmer days in the summer, with the sunset in the evening
and his hand clasped around yours in the lavender field, like you were a flower to treasure and display along the kitchen windowpanes,
And you would beam and spill yourself everywhere and your leaves would flow

onto the countertop, because you are this all-pervasive and growing creature in tune with the flow
of the universe. You are bigger than the secrets and things that stay in the dark,
and it’s perfectly okay that the windowpanes
have shutters, the okayness of it all was shocking when you first realized it, when the trembling of the teacup
finally ceased. The warm brushstrokes of evening
align themselves and coat you in secret invisible paint so that you can blend in with the wind



and let it carry you somewhere fresh and clean and terrible, where the wind
sweeps through alleyways like a madman chasing you down with a dagger in hand, chasing you with the flow
and the torrent of words you refuse to hear. When you finally found your resting place, it was evening
and you were in your grandmother’s rocking chair, the old creaking thing; you were wrapped in a blanket of dark
and comfortable, the whispers of undesired contact spinning in your head, swirling in your teacup.
But you’ve come to the conclusion that you can just leave it alone, leave him out of view, because your windowpanes

are frosted over, and you haven’t had much interest lately in clean glass, much less clean windowpanes.
You reach for his letter, not to break the seal, but instead to toss it to the wind.
You pour a brew of uncried tears and a sprinkle of cinnamon into your teacup,
and your thoughts flow
like the gutter outside that’s gushing with heavenly rain, but they’re all pure and good and dark
just how you like them. This has become your evening.

You have no interest in the world beyond the windowpanes. Your pen was not meant to flow

with godly ink, all those thoughts were best left to fly in the wind with the birds and the crawling things that might care to listen to his sermon in the dark.

Fill his glass with holy red wine and lamb’s blood (pick your poison), sure, but not for you and the china teacup….the tranquility of unsealed letters pairs well with your brew in the evening.

The old housecat reclines in the wicker chair, his
clothesline whiskers hung with heavy drops of white milk.
The green chaise lounge and the woman with wrinkled hands
smooth over the silky, orange coat for a moment that’s
fragile like glass

His sandpaper tongue activates, suddenly,
to clean away the dust of the day and the
last traces of wrinkled hands
It is always surprising how
her youth gets stuck in his fur

There’s a preferable window-seat
on which to recline
with a red, velvet cushion.
So paws pitter-patter and teeter-totter
so soft cheek can rest on cool glass.

The sun outside is melting into the horizon,
reflected in green, tired eyes.
The gummy drops of rain
sliding off of slick windowpanes:
nature’s gift of game,
as paws paw at runny rain.

The sun retires,
and the housecat does, too:
eyes soft and sweet
Flutter shut like the shutters by the window-seat
To dream of grassy fields and plump mice to eat.