It wasn’t until I saw Mama’s arm
broken stupid, clean
bone catching the light, the blood
pink on the broken skin
that I began to believe in God, or rather
in his capacity to break shit. Maybe all
He knows is how to break women
like my father knows how to break women.
Lilith or Eve carved from a rib,
an engine of bone with tits and a mouth
and now my mother with her arm bones
turned out in position five, pointe shoes,
my sister twirling on the parquet floor
of the foyer. It wasn’t until my sister started ballet
that I understood bones
are made to break, or bend beyond their limits: her teacher
forced my sister’s leg to touch the back of her head
until my mother, watching, screamed to stop, just stop
and he stopped short of her neck before letting go.
It wasn’t until Mama left Daddy, dragging
her children behind her like afterthoughts, that I understood
its significance: my father, lost to a syringe dangling
from his arm like an ellipsis, the belt a hot black snake
around his bicep. Mama forgot her shoes
in the living room.
Her feet were suspected of treason.
My sister she led by the hand—kindness she had
for her baby’s bent leg,
and for herself and her bent arm, bulb
of her reconstructed wrist hard as tungsten.
Her Lazarus arm rose up to the door handle: a kind
of kindness. And none of the kindness my way. She pushed me
out the door and trusted I’d follow. I don’t mind
these things; you call a dog a dog’s name.
And it wasn’t anything other
than what it was: women, running,
and a man behind them
gaining speed.
Kathryn Bratt-Pfotenhauer
Kathryn Bratt-Pfotenhauer is the author of the novella Views from a Plague Room (Querencia Press, 2026), Bad Animal (Riot in Your Throat, 2023) and the chapbook Small Geometries (Ethel, 2023). The recipient of a Pushcart Prize, her work has been published in The Missouri Review, The Adroit Journal, and The Masters Review, among others. She is a graduate of Syracuse University’s MFA program in poetry and is a doctoral student at New York University.
