Fifteen

she sulked
round her parents’ house for hours;
her father
was suddenly hateful, the smell
of him in the bathroom,
there, when she entered:
she gagged.

her mother: nervous,
quarrelsome, all
their familiar habits,
evening, oppression, and
she stretched, she tried
to breathe, she talked
to her friends on the telephone

pleading:
release me from family.
eat, her mother said.
she dug at her cuticles: how
her breasts ached, pushing outward
like little wings.