Content warning: references SA

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where hands don’t like going because
something will scratch them before
they can scratch first. the only mark my body leaves
is the space in the air where it isn’t.
pick a card, any card. my mother told me that
1 in 3 women are sexually assaulted before she knew
that i would be one of them. it is thirty years later and
the child in me still goes where the thistles and nettles
do not go, where the dirt is rocky and my
sunburnt body is mistaken for a samara, my skin
spread out like the signature a snake writes in cursive
in the dust. the thorns and i
are in secret conspiracy
to meddle with the paths limbs usually take
walking out of eden.