The slant A building settling around me My figure female framed crookedly In the threshold of the room Door scraping floorboards With every opening Carving a rough history of bedroom scenes The plot hard to follow The text obscured in the fields of sheets Slowly gathering the stains of seasons spent lying there Red and brown Like leaves fallen The colors of an eternal cycle Fading with the Wash cycle And the rinse cycle Again an unfamiliar smell Like my name misspelled or misspoken A cycle broken The sound of them strong Stalking talking about their prey Like the way hammer meets nail Pounding, they say Pounding out the rhythms of attraction Like a woman was a drum like a body was a weapon Like there was something more they wanted than the journey Like it was owed to them Steel toed they walk And I'm wondering why this fear of men Maybe it's because I'm hungry And like a baby I'm dependent on them To feed me I am a work in progress Dressed in the fabric of a world unfolding Offering me intricate patterns of questions Rhythms that never come clean And strengths that you still haven't seen