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.