Fallout (Crank 3)

down hard

against pain,

keep

my little mouth

wedged shut.

Fighting

back was useless,

anyway. I was

fragile

at three, and Zoe

was a hammer.

Girls

are stinkier than

boys when they

get

dirty, she’d say,

scrubbing until I

hurt.

And if I cried

out, I hurt

worse.

I’M FIFTEEN NOW

And though Zoe is no longer

Dad’s lay of the day, I’ll never

forget her or how he closed

his eyes to the ugly things

she did to me regularly.

He never said a word about

the swollen red places. Never

told her to stop. He had to know,