Be glad you’re ugly. Ugly girls lead simpler lives.

    She shrinks away from her mother. The train rocks—nowhere to go.

     Her mother talks about hysteria. Stop being hysteric.

     I lean in. Hystera means uterus. Maladies were thought to stem from a wandering womb. I love the word malady. It sounds like my lady.

     She unravels on a frayed seat.

     The mother curses queers who recruit the ugly ones.

     I think of our uteruses roaming the country, far from city smog, razor gazes. Only, I excised mine. Incinerated waste.

     I sleep facing my window, primed for the soft, wet knock.