You don’t know what it’s like to dig and dig and dig in the dirt with bare hands digging toward fecundity I am trying to find the honest words Buried under our mother’s bones But all I have now is the dirt under my nails, and because I am a woman I set my bucket of soap and water down hard I scrub the blood out of the wood My knees tear open from supporting my own weight and soak the floor Every clean movement forward is erased by the brushstrokes of my own body Please Don’t tell me you know something about housekeeping My body is an apology I can’t scrub clean