I feel a shunning in my sleeping hours—
the violence of no—
when he who shouldn’t does, 
before I knew what longing was. 

I grew into myself before I was ready,
my girl’s mouth forming a zero.
Oh the turning away, the echo in every no,
which shaped and became me—

not like a new dress to try on—no,
more like a second skin. Each day,
I subtracted a little more of my shadow.
What if we get caught?—as if 

discovery were viler than the act itself.
Shame is a junk drawer
stuffed with marbles and plastic dinosaurs and foreign coins—
every dopamine curiosity I wanted. 

It is his mouth on mother's girdle
I pull tight around my tiny frame. 
My long division was just another way
of ending with zero, an old math,

learned by rote, the no I couldn’t swallow.

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