Why should I recall that brush you were beat
with for your fourth lie that week? Control
abandons the pious and scrubbed who eat
in thick silence, whose fists, tongues only unroll
when they’re praying … Christ, it’s so easy now
to look back, analyze, judge, or deny
but I was there — watching — whispered ow
to myself as the welts boiled up on your thigh.
Bright-lit, bristling kitchen of angles, hair liquid coal
above stainless-steel chair legs, the linoleum lifting. How
to account for these visitations in daylight? Objects —
their imprints — stack up, grow like a subsurface reef.
Sister-ship, sister-swimmer, our estrangement connects
us. I hope you’re well. I’ve found sleep a relief.