A Violence

You hear the high-pitched yowls of straysfighting for scraps tossed from a kitchen window. They sound like children you might have had.Had you wanted children. Had you a maternal bone, you would wrench it from your belly and fling itfrom your fire escape. As if it were the stubbornshard now lodged in your wrist. No, you would hide it. Yes, you would hide it inside a barren nesting doll you’ve had since you were a child. Its smilereminds you of your father, who does not smile.Nor does he believe you are his. “You look just like your mother,” he says, “who looks just like a fireof suspicious origin.” A body, I’ve read, can sustainits own sick burning, its own hell, for hours.It’s the mind. It’s the mind that cannot.