my father howled my sister down until she became a voice in my head.  I go to where she might’ve been so I can be looked at as one asking before her.  men have for me two syllables that form a coma.  women stand in final stages of nakedness holding jugs of water but leave me to flower and to mull on them as incantations of the tin man’s great calling.  if I am romantic I am romantic in the increments my mother measures to dream herself to sleep.  beauty is the prop scale I rule from.  none are the mourners of gain.