Her mouth is a stage sprouting cardboard trees.
What’s my motivation? she asks the man reading in her bed.
She runs headless through the mall and everyone shouts Hey Legs!
No one mentions the girls gnawing each ankle to its core.
Inside the beast is an apple
holding a knife to its throat
threatening to rot.
So that’s what that noise was.
She digs a claw into her ear. Pulls out a longship.
Rides it to the bottom of the mine.
She peels glue from her hands.
The mine asks her about her mother
and she laughs, which is funny
because root vegetables don’t have mouths.
Somewhere, miles above, the girl (or her mother)
is putting on gloves
or tearing chicken from the bone.
Line… Line…
Somewhere, she is a cell remembering itself
suddenly, late at night.