one day I inhale the oceans iron
and I suddenly think of how my dad used to cup my
mothers drooping boobs when she bent over
of the uneasiness I felt watching it happen
yet I know I was ruined or ruinous even before that
even before I fucked my collegue bareback in the cellars
(an irascible cook who later called me thief of sperm)
or a married man his three children watching
dutifully from the frame
even before school where I first slept with my best friends
boyfriend and then with his
brother I was much younger when I heard
my parents moans through
the wall and touched myself to the sickly sounds
and also when a teenage neighbour took me for
a ride on his cock
his pyjamas still on and when I somehow kind of liked
it how easy it’d be to say:
I did not understand so I turned my shame into hunger
and my hunger into power or
into something that felt owned at least so maybe
one day I could own myself again
but was it ever true even just born even
before and before and before?

                                                                     
it is o.k. now I am maybe more like
the propulsion of siphonophores

a colony of
the girl
I was the woman
I am the ghost
I will be

and if I had a God I might be praying
or I might just go through the motions
folding up my napkin after each meal
asking forgiveness