In the first version, your father tells you
he wishes you had been a boy, this you understand –
the hands that made you were not always
the hands you asked for. Consistently,
you will recheck the locks on
your doors and return to the kitchen. You will not
make or eat any cookies but you will open
the freezer thirteen times, you
don’t remember when you started
avoiding reflections. In this version, you are the
tower and the moat all by yourself – filled with alligators
and unanswered knocks. The first time
you have sex, you don’t cry. Afterwards, you
sit on the floor of the bathroom and scrub your skin until tiny
beads of blood appear, for the rest of the week
you dream of airports.
In the second version, you are already dead
and you forget you ask who touches you – often you will
call your mother and hang up before the first ring. This, you believe,
is consistent with what you know of safety, and afterwards
you sleep.