The Slant - Ani DiFranco

The slant

A building settling around me My figure female framed crookedly

In the threshold

Of the room

Door scraping floorboards

With every opening

Carving a rough history

Of bedroom scenes

The plot hard to follow

The text obscured

In the fields of sheets

Slowly gathering the stains

Of seasons spent lying there

Red and brown

Like leaves fallen

The colors of an eternal cycle

Fading with the

Wash cycle

And the rinse cycle

Again an unfamiliar smell

Like my name misspelled

Or misspoken

A cycle broken

The sound of them strong

Stalking talking about their prey

Like the way hammer meets nail

Pounding, they say

Pounding out the rhythms of attraction

Like a woman was a drum like a body was a weapon

Like there was something more they wanted

Than the journey

Like it was owed to them

Steel toed they walk

And I’m wondering why this fear of men

Maybe it’s because I’m hungry

And like a baby I’m dependent on them

To feed me I am a work in progress

Dressed in the fabric of a world unfolding

Offering me intricte patterns of questions

Rhythms that never come clean

And strengths that you still haven’t seen