my father howled my sister down until she became a voice in my head. I go to where she might’ve been so I can be looked at as one asking before her. men have for me two syllables that form a coma. women stand in final stages of nakedness holding jugs of water but leave me to flower and to mull on them as incantations of the tin man’s great calling. if I am romantic I am romantic in the increments my mother measures to dream herself to sleep. beauty is the prop scale I rule from. none are the mourners of gain.