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 ***, 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.