Letter

On the car ride home, I wrote a note to my father,

recycled notebook paper my confessional,

Baba, he touched me – except I couldn’t say where –

or how the man who shares the blood of my

mother pursued his fix for me. That note with four

words – to touch is to impart sensation. Yet when he

in all his muck touched me his hands were

bricks against my hips, his tongue a snail

inside my mouth. Baba, he touched me – that note

with four words – to touch is to feel. Yet when he molded

my delicacy like sculpting clay virgin mother into all the wrong

places – I felt hardened after an evening in the kiln of his bedroom.

What was I saying? My father had to park the car, as I

started again, explained how the thought of someone’s touch

is too sensitive because of the way my uncle left me: how

suddenly that note – everything before it – had gone wrong.