No Escape 

Maybe one day I too can be a scarecrow. I can push away 
every blackbird that comes my way. Its beak is a thorn in my thumb. Making my
finger more purple than a stubbed toe. I understand that I am only a woman. With her
hair 
burnt to a crisp and brain burnt to black. 
Maybe I can grow my pretty hair again if I make a wish. My grandmother told me
to put my teeth under my pillow so men can use them as jewelry. 
Teeth as pendants. 
Every dawn fades away like the scent of my mother’s perfume. 
When the dawn fades away for me, 
it is like the color of an overwashed sweater. Flushed from every hug and
breath. Sometimes I miss 
when my hair was braided. The bodied hair welters in the air. I was a girl.
Now, my hair is turned masculine. Stained. He did it. 
He knifed down my cranium. Cracked like a broken bone. Sticking out of flesh.
He did it. Again. Why must I grow up? 
He ate my split skull with a spoon. I woke up with indents on my head. Circular.
My mother would read me a book every night to remind me of the wise words
people can say. The other people sit in a pitch-black room and drink whiskey out of
the bottle. We’re not allowed in there. He once 
told me that a sunset is like a backward sunrise. 
I had never felt so hollow so fast before. Nothing was beautiful. All I
remembered was watered-out beauty. 
Every scarecrow is a woman. We bleed hoping for
something more than a child. But every blackbird 
pecks at her strawed body. Plucked and poked from each hole. 
He undresses me to a bare straw. He unclasps my button eyes. Crying. Crying.
My fingernails are burnt black. My fingertips are burnt pink. Alone. Maybe my
mother can fix them. 
Do I regret painting them? Yes. Do I know who burnt them? 
No.