Dietary Law

They say it is not too early for some numbers, if feminine,

of weak frames and letterings to open into humid lands

so much that they know the wetness of August rain all day.

An old man told tales of numbers eating numbers:

he says numbers between ten and twelve are foods 

for decades of numbers, like seventy above, old enough

to yield sets of certain numbers termed games,

matured enough to fill the belly of creeping maggots.

How else do we define evil if not this way?

Have you ever felt like living in a body that is not yours?

In my father’s room, I hold a photograph of me at twelve

and I imagine a man of his age knocking to enter a place 

God called sacred the day he moulded me.

I didn’t think for ages. I just couldn’t afford to –

I was able to intuit the myriads of pangs of distress

a young maiden feels in the darkness of mandatory union.

I dive into the haps in my neighbourhood –

here is a baby factory her man calls by violent punches.

I have lost it, everything about me except a question

chasing you into mist: is it a crime to be feminine?