is murdering unguarded presidents of countries you were not born in. This is a reminder that I was not born here or at all I stumbled into this limp living like a glue trap & since then I’ve dragged what remains of my torso behind me like a soiled bridal train.

When my parents got married the crowd flung axes instead of rice. After the divorce they spent their last night together unsheathing the rusty blades that had since scabbed over from each other’s backs. Once upon a time I was small & would fold my single stolen skirt into the soft shape of an axe, then hide it under my bed. All known futures & models of physics agree that loving anything forever is difficult: your husband whines about dinner, the winters last too long to care about the miracle of snow, & by the time you spot your senator in the grocery store you’ve already started stripping off your clothes. Axes it’s said last longest when kept under your pillow they guard your brain the president of your body & I was not born I was numbed into boyhood by some dumb government of no mothers

like the woodsman whose dark-haired god stuck thumbs in his belt loops & forged a new commandment about reading & the sea next winter so the woodsman took from the bed his prizewinning axe & hacked the ice from his skull.