I was supposedly a girl much louder
than any other, talking to no one and myself
until father rushed to purchase the glue,
piecing me together, a wrinkled jigsaw puzzle
and now I cannot speak to him anymore.

Nor anyone else, the men or women
not even the babies howling to cradlelace:
if one asked for me to pull them out, I
would claim that they are conjoined twins.

Only me and the pad of paper I ******,
it rests on my ***** or under an armpit,
but worse are the sleeping crates
inside my mind, a door and a handle holding
one another like lips not coming undone.

Please speak again, they say,
they do not know I can completely do it
just not with the maggots swarming through:

please, though, put my lips back, I write,
as if I had not split them apart already
and ate the frosting they laced each with,
I will be a child whose cradle they’re inside
supposedly an infant with much louder cries.