The Alternate

Father stands at the door and nods twice.
Early. He’s early tonight.
I arrange my body on the bed
as close as I can remember
to how my mother’s had been found on the veranda,
the window broken by her elbow,
the jack of glass in her hand still.

Last night, the ancestors sewed close
my mother’s wrists
and led her into the woods.
I saw. I bit my arm to keep silent.
No, Momma. Don’t go.

Father opens my robe
and parts my testicles with his finger.
I clutch a silk pillow to my face,
the blood vessels stitched there like embroidery.
Not now, but in twenty minutes,
I can shower and sleep.