When I charged, my sisters fled and were faster—
pattering feet on the brick path, rustling orange trees.
I guess you could say, It’s dark in here. 

Holes for the nostrils and eyes do not align,
so beams of light dart in like bioluminescent fish, 
the space hot and pressed into my shoulders. 

When I try on this old head, I enter a dark house. 
Every room may as well be the same 
without colors. In my own home, I try

to learn watercolor, to cook dinner. 
I can’t tell if it’s wreckage or finished. 
My husband brings me offerings of flower petals. 

Should I devour them or just inhale? I’m trying to disprove 
assumptions about the monster—the always eating, 
the appetite for sex, the disappearing acts. 

So doing, I cannot pose with food, 
or recline in bed, any gesture mistaken 
for fleeing or chasing or aggression. I do not know

what to do with my hands. These days, 
bullfighters practice with training carts—
the bull’s head at the prow of a wheelbarrow, 

and the person not so much inside, 
steers from the back. In this hollow, 
never knowing if I’m alone,

I can only stand still, sway
my weighty head from side to side
until the world is spinning.