المرة مرة و إن تنمرت

 

My girliness is the size of a Cerberus.

I unchain it out my body, serpent tail tombing

 

a Mercedes, someone’s Scissorhand 

shrubs, trio-headed howls loudening 

 

the clean suburb. It is not tasteful 

to fuck with the Tooth Fairy, baby teeth planted 

 

in the oleanders. To beat up boys 

at the park, make one my wife 

 

in a white dress when we play marriage. 

My aunties crammed me with a mute troubadour 

 

& a lame-folded fawn since birth. 

Tell me why there is something else 

 

powering inside, trying to get out, pummeling 

my skin purple. Tell me, when can I stop barbing 

 

my headscarves, lining my lashes 

with spears? I learn to love my body 

 

by playing dead: legs man-spreading, droop-

lipped for vultures to dine on my basking belly, 

 

wattle of female hanging from their beaks, 

& it’s the only time I lie still. My girliness 

 

is a whistle uphill, & my mother is too far 

down to hear it. She says, Stop being reckless. 

 

I say, Truth is, I quit being cautious 

in third grade when the towers fell 

 

&, later, wore the city’s hatred as hijab. 

I believe my baby breasts are reckless, so I tape 

 

them down. Loop training bras to ceiling 

fans. Stay hairy. She pulls out her prayer mat, 

 

enlists God to drag a sharp nail across 

my jaw as I sleep,  shave my girl-beard off. 

 

So I carry copper-heads into the kitchen 

as compensation, tails whipping raw 

 

slaps on my chest. Their fangs bite air 

& I bite back until I creak when I talk. 

 

She beheads them with a meat knife 

then beats me blue, & I take everything 

 

giggling. We all choose how to fill 

the lingering lack inside us: I lace bitch-loud 

 

boots to the knees. Scab soft skin 

on asphalt. Peel the grit whenever 

 

my blood hardens. I am at war. I go out 

to hunt girliness. Find her crouched, camouflaged 

 

like a fugitive between the forsythias. 

I load my brother’s bb gun, ignore

 

her old insistence, begging herself pink. 

There was never a day I claimed those flowers–—

 

open-mouthed sacrifice, blush-wrecked 

boon–—or any hound that heeled.