When the men arrive, lock the doors, woman.
Cut out all the soft parts of yourself and leave them to rot
so someone else won’t spoil them first.
Woman, lick your wounds like a cat and wear your first name so well
that the second-to-last man can’t wrap his tongue around it.
Drain the moonlight into a bowl and light up
your body like a candlelit vigil,
say Come get me. But not before I show you what your teeth
look like in the palm of my fist.
Wear the incisors on a necklace next to the molars
until they clack against one another like a string of bullets.
Woman, fill your belly with the nonexistent apologies
and wolf whistles, the sideways glances and unwanted touches,
until your hunger is sated.
The men will not turn you into splintered wood this time.
They will not make you bleed where it counts.
You are no ghost town, woman. Not now. Not ever again.