You will have a conversation with your mother, sitting in between hot-white slats of ladled sunlight, about coming-of-age.

but you do not hear them. if you had, you would have known to flee—
tripping over the calluses of your own feet to escape.
if you had, you would have known to tear yourself apart—
shedding the silken layers of your loveliest qípáo to find a way out.