I have outgrown my pinafores and cotton smocks!
The clotted milk of my mother too sour to stomach
And her fridges full of rotten meat.
Even my brother could not escape that black house
Where fate stalked my desperate myth-making
And my desire for suffering as clean as a half-cut apple
All the more tender for its bruise –

He held onto our father’s death handed to us as an heirloom
Or a ritual to be repeated and passed down,
While I stole away to secret gardens with sprinkled sugar
And quilted silk

                          still half-asleep in some perpetual spring

To the men I offered my half-eaten heart and to the women
My sutures sticky with gristle and marbelized eyes,
But not even God was willing to accept my sacrifice!
The firstborn of the flock with her wool still wet with slaughter.