Page 32 of The Melancholy of Mechagirl

You spooled out lessons

like an older sister:

Make your waist like this,

indicating curve.

Make your eyes like this,

indicating blue.

Make your face

make your skin

make your clever, clever hands,

make them this way,

indicating civilized,

indicating soft, your own,

your freckled breast linen-bound.

The old vixens, with their scabby,

mushroom-strung claws,

only said to run from boys,

and you looked so thick and pure,

like the inside

of a bone.

III.

I lashed my tail to my waist

in your gold-wood kitchen,

ridiculous in blue silk,

with cornflowers in my ears.

We bent over squash soup and sour cherries,

you put your hands over mine

to show me how to crease dough

over a silver pan.

I bit your cheek at teatime;

you smelled all day of my musk.

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