After church, my brother teaches me

dirty words & all of them

are ways to be womaned.

Night begins somewhere

at the blade-edge

of a body: my brother

sneaks into my mouth

& serrates my teeth, sucks each

clean enough to sun

a room & slap

a shadow off my body.

He likes the dark, the whites

of his eyes wounding

my sleep, waking an ache

in my jaw. In 7th grade,

my brother asks if I’ve ever seen

an erection. I will never know

how blood lunges

inside a boy, becomes a length

of time to forget

my body inside of. The summer nights

I fevered & teethed through both

our sheets, he ladled me

into a bath & the moonlight

stung my skin. The next morning

our mother burned all my clothes

& his too. Proven to prevent

infection. Years later, I cut my tongue

on a cracked tooth & cauterized

the wound with a match. Now

my breath is burnt, my voice a smoke

-furred silence, syntaxed

with scars. My brother still leaves me

voicemails that sound like prayer.

He kneels in my doorway, says

this is the last time. This is the last time

I’ll be someone else’s

god. Godhood is just

like girlhood: