The Horse Is The Villain

The children blindfold me,
tie my dyed hair
across my eyes
like a harness,
wedge a sock
in my mouth. Struggle
with the instinct
toward what they can’t
 
grasp. Lead me
to an imagined
trailer, its rubber
wheels, red
mulch, wrestle me
inside. Drive me around
the property, stripped
since the last tornado.
 
I tell them I am unsafe
with my mother.
Hear her call out in the near
dark. The hair loosens
from my eyes.
We are all of us unsafe
together
in the coming night,
 
stumbling
toward a rusted out
Chevelle,
through the crackle
of AM radio
—a preacher
wailing his homily
like a pack of baying hounds.

It all begins with an idea.

I keep my fingernails short so that when I touch myself
I will never tear through my interiority. Each time I leave
the house I remind my husband to touch the children

often to fold them gently into him. Put his hands over
their hands, notice the security of diminishing pulse
on their unbothered skin while they sleep. As a child

people only remembered to touch me when I was sad,
this helped me understand the way power contaminates
the integrity of sadness. When my hands are at rest

I curl them into fists, thumb hooked inside first finger.
If I punched someone like this I wonder if I would break
the knuckle on first contact. No one noticed until my son,

pulling back each digit one by one, asks
if my heart is abnormally small for my body.