when i was a little girl, my mother used to whisper to me
to sooth my cries as she dropped me off at daycare
or the howls erupting while she detangled my hair
and even when my brother was caught
performing surgery on my teddy bears–

i am tiptoeing along the very last pebble of girlhood’s cliff
and it feels as if any day now i will fall right off and land into the body of a woman

he reads me a story
about a man and a woman
whose talking leads to drinking
and drinking leads to dancing
and dancing leads to undressing in her...

the first time i saw a boy without his clothes on
my elbows dug into the pews afront me, my hands clasped in prayer
i bent my neck up as far as my tendons would allow
before the congregation would hear their wretched tear...

you ask me about home and i tell you
not about mailing addresses
nor stucco walls engulfing
granite countertops
but about...