THE BREAK IN

It was a break-in

She had left the lights on

Too proud of home

Did she forget to lock the door?

Glass smashed across the floor

Her boyfriend comes over the next morning

To help her sweep it up.

Wishing with his silence

And reluctant hands

That he could understand the value of what has been burgled.

He wants to fit more locks,

He wants to bleach his whole gender

Down the same drain

All her blood went.

Occupying her body

Had always felt like a protest

Like most she was but a

Hesitant squatter within her “womanliness.”

Now it is like

Trying to live in a bombsite

All rubble and splinters.

She accepts his attempts to clean up the crime-scene

As though the rape had been

Nothing more than vandalism

When all the light had been

Ransacked from beneath her skin.