My mother didn’t want my brother
and the older he got
the more I agreed with her.

The mustard-seed bath
and quinine didn’t work
and she was too afraid
to use a wire hanger.

Now I’m waiting for
my turn, my uterus,
to be dilated, sucked clean.

Hips arched, I scream.
He slams my body down.
“Shut up, let’s get this done.”

It was a most difficult day,
but not a difficult decision.

My house is filled
with groping hands,
and when my father

kicks me in the cunt,
my brother laughs,
begs him to do it again.

An award-winning poet from Detroit, Denise Sedman has been featured in San Pedro River Review, New Verse News, Nassau Review and Poets Reading the News. She is anthologized in the 2017 Nasty Women Poets by Lost Horse Press and Abandon Automobile, Wayne State University Press, 2011. She identifies as a senior woman with bipolar illness.