My 8-yr-old daughter is teaching me how to live with myself after 34yrs in this body I can finally

split myself in two & marvel that now I pass the Bechdel test. What I’ve let men scavenge—

my collarbones, femurs, the fleshy pads of my inner thighs, bitemarks butterflying from the clotted cream

that cornmeal death has made of my skin—has given way to blood

poisoning.I haven’t done much but get dumped by one & tell the other to stop raping me when I’m dreamcumming

& he finally after 13yrs together & a year of divorce understands a sleeping body moaning

is not consent. & while he’s had to learn truths he should’ve learned as a boy I too chart a map to my unlearning.

I rewatch the filmstrips of my girlhood with my girl & she covers her face at kissy scenes & very practically, very kindly but firmly

lifecoaches the girls/women You are worth so much more than you know & finally I hear from the gift of my womb

what my mother never taught me. My daughter transforms the desert of my memory—peels the spines

from the cacti, fashions me a crown that asks Who were you when you weren’t blooming only for boys? & I recall the night-

blooming cereus, whose bats fly hundreds of miles one night of the year to sustain themselves on the sweet nectar, & how many

mornings I missed, how many dark things I emptied myself for. My daughter is a graveyard by which I mean ripe

for rebirthing. She pulls me from the beds I’ve buried & tells me if she is wise it’s because I’ve taught her

by which she means I’ve held myself deep within myself all along.

I’ve plucked bones & swapped for jackrabbit for woodrat for javelina. O tusks o glorious horns

I’ve borne from daughter, from the un- mothered loam.