Nothing would haunt her more than what her forefathers
Did to the women they professed to love.
That word had been so overused, abused, that it lost
Significance, that it became a myth in absentia.
She licked their lips, ramming her head into their chest,
Across their skin, to find the traces of her father again
That seemed lovable. They put their hands on her throat
And she thought that this was the language they all understood.
She looked at old photographs, eyes on her sex,
The invisible hands and gestures, swept into
The back of her mind, kindle her pre-established desire,
And she’d feel rotten, full of shame, insults penetrating her skin.
She remembers the voice of her father,
The vocabulary, sand in the bottom of the ocean,
The sound of the belt, the spreading female legs,
The hunger, inherited, the sex reveals it all.
Croque-Melpomene 