Sarah J. Sloat, Borderless Box, 2022 (Artist Instagram)
Collage, 6 x 7 inches
Is this how God feels about us, I wonder, holding down her arms. Nurse
immediately, the screen says. Don’t stand too close, says the book.
This is for the best, but you can’t know that. Is this what Sky
Mama thinks? You don’t know you’ll be fine. The hawkmoth doesn’t hurt
the flower it drinks from. It’s like that, but not as nice. I can’t tell you
anything. I can’t word this away. You see, someday there may be a man—
we don’t have to talk of it now. Of apertures, of the chintz you may wish
to press into your flesh, of the foolish ink, of the noble ink, of the other bodies
you may wish to allow inside you. This is for the best. The split, the silence,
all of it. An unhappy woman pats two bandages onto your thighs: glorious as cream
skimmed from a bucket. I hate her. I love your thighs. I hate that there are men
here on earth who will want to part them, who will only see you as an opening
through which they can be reborn, into which they’ll glug their miseries like bleach
into a drum. What does Sky Mama think about that? Choose the time of day
when the child is happiest, the book says. That’s when the needle should go in.