When You Say "Protestors" instead of Protectors

I would call it a trick, if it wasn't so terrifying, the way your mouth doesn't move when you speak. Your smile, shiny as a church, but what kind of prayer could ever be trusted without evidence of a free tongue? On the rare occasion sound shakes loose, words, no matter how unmuzzled, words still go to die. In your mouth, even womb is wound. Sometimes I dream of tearing your throat wide open and finding there, where stories should be born, only bleeding bleedingbleeding. The wish to desecrate. We are, yet again, portrayed by you,

the girl

the Native

the water

the mountain who was "asking for it." Your lips so Sunday still. Sometimes I almost believe you. So it's best I keep hiding knives in my hair, the way my grandmother - not god - the way my grandmother intended.