For years, I walked the moderate path

that curbed at the end of the lit

doorway where my mother always stood

waiting. Each time the strangers

knocked, I covered my hair

or hardened my face until

I became another door behind

the door. A good muslim girl,

I slumped my breasts. I never had

sex. Instead, one evening, I slid

in a white tub. I fingered the little pool

in my bellybutton and drew the lick of

it down my labia opening

its winged cave. My mother,

who found me through a slit

in the door, said, ​you come from dirt.

Later, I hid as I did this. We hid

in a green hood on a rooftop

the night he planked me down on

the wooden table, hunkered over

and breathed ​dog.

All I wanted, then, was to swill

into the umbra of his body

the way I swept under the tub water

that evening and lay there

for longer than I could.