Here, I am interrupted by being the only woman in the room –
the seventeen year old woman in a lace gown
that strays from her kneecaps, untouched but by air
and launching in the breeze for twenty sets of interested eyes.

Give me their heads on a platter
so that no one will ever finish watching me waltz.
I am a bachelorette, but taken by all these mouths that tell me
who else I am or could be, supposed to be in this ether.

Heel, he says. I am a dog. Roll onto your back. I am his *****.
But we shed our skin like snakes in a corner no one sees.