gets slowly started: Hansel’s asshole
oatmeal spoon in a bowl down the hall in the kitchen, the intricate etching
of many sets of breasts hanging

low on the wall beside our bed. When I get up, first
for the mirror: my hair is always amazing! Later, without fail —
make the bed. Swallow my pills. Try to fix —

this? — I used to think of people, lovers
of me as ways
to take. I’d take
a way. Each seemed to seal any other
off. I’d run right out
like I did as a kid. From the plane
to look for my mother. Now I feel

no longing for men.
Birds fly off the top of my head —
see the black shape on the woody well-mowed grass?
It’s the hashtag shadow of an actual crow.

I too have made a life of trying to
make my Gretel – go!