Some say marriage is a twinning.
A surgery of adding attachments.
When I undress, the dirt throbs
for me. The mushrooms betray
chastity and parade their vile shape.
Why, among this applause,
have I become so small in this life,
why has love taken away my face?
Some women pray for a husband
who will take the sky in his fist
and break it. We do not sign away
our power to men who sog
like paper boats. Whoever we marry:
we vanish like a trick. What sickness,
to call a woman wife just once, then
call her chalkboard until she is a puff
of white dust, a vague outline
against a black sky. I have so little
of my own. I could hold this new
worth in one hand. When my husband
fucks and plunders through seasons
and countries like a migration
of hurt, I am left in a field of women
giving birth to mirrors of their own
vanishing lives. This is the painting
I have become. My life is not to be
worshipped. I would trade it to the god
of bolt guns or knives. They say
there is beauty in the dark eyes
of a cow. I am out among the neglected
bodies looking for beauty in this slaughter.