and I am a little girl at the dining room table again, with warm light
listening to locusts through the window, sitting
wide-eyed, swallowed up in a chair for hours while my father told
stories that would make his work friends erupt in their
bellowing alto-toned laughter and rattle the china in our tiny cabinets,
piecing together jargon and proud that my mother would let me
sit in the conference room instead of
bussing the table and washing dishes with the women so I

grew up sharpening my jawline with metal files and
tucking clay into the concavities above my hips, willing
it to harden into a squared angular body like a brick wall, like
a body for a suit and a stainless steel-linked watch for the left wrist who sat at the heads of dining room tables,

and with lungs full of spite and longing I cut my hair and
learned to explain actuator mechanisms and chemical rocket propulsion and sit in conference rooms in my scuffed-up steel-toed boots with
folded arms and witty curses about process control that make everyone laugh and I
can't help but notice how much more delicate my fingers are than everyone in the room and wonder whether my bone structure might have
negative safety margins for the functions I am
attempting by being there, but I find that it's

too late to cry for someone to touch your waist and kiss
your cheekbones whispering that you look like Aphrodite with your flowing hair and fill you with what you need because

what "woman" is left of one who casted her womb full of
cement to prove that she is man enough to sit at the table?