You bathe me as the cocks crow. You scrub my skin & do not sing— your old songs about millet, about rain returning late this year, about men who promise cattle & forget. Today, your mouth is a tight shroud that wraps me twice & sells me to the wandering merchants. Be brave, you say to me in a voice where bravery means something else will hurt.

//

Outside, the wanzam waits— woman with her head shaven clean like a potato. Her kola-browned teeth & the tribal marks across her face make her look like she fought a lion. The women come in singing in wrappers bright as colorful fugu, their anklets gossiping against the earth, their mouths full of ululations. They say today I’ll become clean. They call me beautiful in a way you praise goats before Dumba festival.

//

But why won’t you meet my eyes? Why do you keep smoothing my hair with shea butter as though trying to iron fear flat? I am only twelve, mother. I still race goats to the stream & still sleep with my foot outside the mat because I dream of running. I still look at myself in the mirror & dare maturity to notice my orange-sized breasts. Yay, grandma also says after today, I’ll be clean.

//

The small room behind the compound smells of smoke & old sweat & something sharp like blades. A bowl of lukewarm water. A folded pure cotton cloth. A stool inside a space with no windows. & when you smile with only half your teeth & say sit as though I am finally back in school, I watch an ant cross the wall before hands find my shoulders & knees. I almost wish I were an ant when I call for you with my eyes as the room becomes one white scream.

//

Bats rise from somewhere inside me & I wonder why becoming feels so much like burial. Though the worst comes later in the walking & stinging urine & the nights that return me to the room, you finally look at me & call me,

//

WOMAN.