they put the kids away like groceries
while soldiers rummage rooms for men and money
feed them, wordless, on their stomachs
looking at the carpets and the mud tracked in

afterward they count what’s left
the crescent crusts, the bruises on their thighs
the calendars on flowered walls, a day crossed off

a day

a day

then nothing

first published in Room, issue 45.1, 2022

the air in her house is thick
with yesterday and she says
you’re growing tall like a woman
and clucks her tongue and 
rustles through the kitchen
drawers thick-painted white.

cutlery clinks together
etching scars on surfaces
(like the girls in school in
their too close beds
set in rows so
you could see when the
men came in and who
they went to).

this will do.

she pats a spot
on the chesterfield
pulls me down
beside her holds me
to the river beds of her
cheeks her avon smells
and the shush of
hoarded tv guides
under our bums.

she puts a teaspoon on
my palm and wraps my fingers
around it like a gift.

keep this in your pocket.

(she’s given me other things
a bar of ivory soap, a bread bag full of pennies
a washcloth folded tied with string
but a spoon?

she has so many
resting in bowls of hardened mush
tucked into the bible like
bookmarks.)

she waits
for me to stick it in the
shallow of my corduroys
where I rub it like a worry
stone, rub the steel
Into a mirror.

you hold the spoon in your
hand like so and
place it here
next to the nose
next to the eye
between the nose and
the eye and push.

and then?

she takes my
hands and prays them in
front of me, her own
on top of mine.

and then you run.