When the forensics nurse inspected me, she couldn’t

see the tenderness he showed me after. My walk home

 

squirmed sore with night. I passed the earthworms

displaced to sidewalk, their bodies apostrophed

 

in the sun. I did not anticipate a grief

so small, my noun of a prayer, Eat dirt to make dirt.

 

Took a man’s hand as he led me to cave. So long

as I breathed, I could huff violets in his dank, practice

 

earth’s gasp. Mother lifts daughter, daughter casts

look at camera, a killer, a stick in the mud. I hold

 

my own hand. When the forensic nurse inspected

me, I described the house, historic blue. Asked me

 

to push my hips down. Little crescent moons

where his nails stabbed into me. She gave me

 

the word abrasion so gently I offered consent. Blue

as the moon when I sighed wait, blue as the no of my



throat. Abrasion, possibly extended form of red.

Harm results in a starry night too, many galaxies

 

scraped under the nail of a heavenly body. Ah my

second earth, its wounds hardened into swallowed

 

prophylaxis, an injection pooling between muscle

and skin. A woke seed. Deadarmed anti-moons

 

aggregated. A storm can travel seeds up to 30 miles

away. They dust on the sidewalks like lost data.

 

He did not intend Did not. Bloody speculum

a telescope searching the angry night sky for proof.