look through a window
and see another window;
a curtainless house
in an empty field
where your daughters
are leaving, silently
like cats finding
a place to die.
i open the door
to a raw steak
on the porch;
red on white,
shocking as murder
or glimpses of your
mother’s men-
struation. the birds
have left it to rot
privately
as if every animal
knows the smell
of shame. my father
fed the gulls with
fatty carcasses
flung out the open
window centuries
ago. now his ghost
urinates loudly
beside my bed-
room walls. i touch
myself like holding
hands with a sword.
i bleed wetly,
wetly. it sounds
like a boy weeping
without a mouth.