To my daughter I will caution that human beings are not ships
and cannot be saved from sinking no matter how low the tide
or how quickly the bucket hauls the water from the hull.
To my daughter, who kisses men’s knuckles like raw egg yolks,
I will nail a whisper to our bulletin board as a warning
for what her body will become after too many days
of skipping meals. Leave store-bought cell phones
in her bed one after the other with cracked screens,
“slide to unlock,” tell her that with sunken cheekbones
no one will be able to unlock her anymore either.
The year I lit a fire in the backyard and she stared
at the soot like a wolf, stuck a lit candle between her lips
like a shotgun and ached to pull the trigger,
the year jumping jacks and pushups became more common
than breaking curfew. The year I checked for skeletons
in my daughter’s closet, only to find her there
as a living one instead. The year of replaced roles.
For my daughter I will hide the bathroom scale
and fill our best china bowl with rain during a storm,
put it outside on the front porch steps and say,
Eat when you are hungry.