—for Stephanie

Sunny spectacled father in the photos
he holds her bone-white face;
her aggie eyes see everything, nothing.

At five, she thinks she’s fully dressed
with cowboy hat, bullet-studded holster,
pearly handled gun. When she falls

from the spotted pony he’s so proud she’s mastered,
it crushes her forearm with its arched hoof.
In a white gown under a white sheet

in a white room full of women’s voices, she hears
a white-masked man who keeps her down.
He says he doesn’t mean to hurt her,

holds an ether-soaked gauze over her nose and mouth.
She dreams she is an angel, she can fly
away. Back home in bed she hears

someone breathing in her closet through pleated skirts.
If she covers her head, holds her breath
and shuts her lids, he’ll recognize

tonight she’s dead. Behind her eyes her mother wears
a ruby dress and strand of pearls.
Sleep funnels her toward school,

the Visible Man and Visible Woman, private parts erased;
plastic layers lift from skin
to muscle, rainbow organs, white frame.

Surprised one morning coming from his closet, he meets her
eye level with his drooping pink bone.
His hands curve over

her buttocks in punishing love, forbidding gaze.
That night she watches
a chip of moon arc

over his heaving shoulder; it’s a hook, a knife
she can’t yet reach. Her aggie eyes see nothing,
everything.

On a hidden horizon, the sun oozes. In a bay, tight-lipped
oysters embedded in sand cover secret grit.
Full moon, pearl button, fastens

midnight’s blue-black blouse.

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