conquistadora
by lena

why i still touch myself, why touch
even matters, i don't know.
my collarbone, a ladder, a hand-grip you
used to climb up or down me, all over me
my empty fingernails, my busted kneecaps
gates to my garden shattered—broken, used.
it is a hollow victory against that part of me,
as it was to everyone else, something to take
and probe, and when they discovered I
was a used-up emptied gold-mine, devoid of
glitter, they pulled back the canary and
left. now the well is poisoned, but I
have ever been a masochist. I like the pain.
it is my turn now, my turn to ravage me.
see what dust-covered fool's gold I can
pull up from the core.
I never got the hang of invasion, the
lack of heart in it, maybe until now.
but now there's no glittering
aorta-red thing to flutter its banners
over my battlefield body—now there's
no you-of-the-armistice, you-of-the-cease-
fire-in-me, i understand what taking
is all about.
because you understood it,
and you did it. your hands, always
small in pictures—they knew their way
right to the center. bypassed the apex of
my sex, though—oh!—you lingered, how
long you lingered. right to that locked
treasure-chest of my thorax, left of
center where lungs pumped hard and
ribs failed at protecting, charmed the
Cerberus and talked your way in, played
up to the intensity of the beat of
that mass of involuntary muscle I
do not dare to name. what they took, you
sought to replace. small hands
make for better thieves, however,
and you could take it back any time you wanted.
it was borrowed grace. i had already fallen.
so now there is nothing left there and I
make do with what I can take
elsewhere. like Sexton said, i marry
this damn bed—or desk chair, or
floor—and i sign my name to the
divorce papers written on my abdomen.
who i divorce is me, as i am all I
have left to let go of.
i dot my I's over my belly-
button, i cross my T's on my
thighs. I burn brushfires with my
touch—I am southwestern United
States (divided, Civil War-style),
I am fire eating wood alive.
I fuck me raw. I scream my name.
I do all but kiss myself senseless.
Rape is never so easy as when you
are raping yourself.
never so difficult.
You were kind to me, so now I make
me hurt. You filled me up, now i
empty me. I restore myself to
neutrality, taking all your make-love
and feeding it hate.
i know what i am doing.