I.Here’s a truth about the world and the people who live in it:no one wants to touch the dead body, yet everyone waitsto consume its flesh. It’s a story I know now by heart:a girl goes into the forest and returns a woman against her will.Her dress torn. Hands anointed in blood. Soil and tears veil her face.In this house, war solves only one problem: the desire to wage war.Surrendering to the body’s feral instructions, my family carves upmy pet goat, Ife. Ife, Yorùbá, meaning “love.” Imagine that:eating love. My family eating my Love. They sit uprightat the dinner table, clinking silverware, Love filling their mouths.      II.The line between beast and human is a fallacy of conquest.It’s all the same war: animals devouring animals.Maybe I should be grateful it’s not me at the table’s center—on all fours stuffed with sweet peppers, garlic, and sage.My name, noble as the wind, and like the wind, I am invisible.They delight in my labor and not a single “thank you.”Ife and I were the same: creatures no one wants.      III.Adam’s one silver tooth tears into the meat of Love.When he sees I refuse food, we stare at each other.We carry two narratives. In one, he is a good fatherteaching me my place in the world. To beat me into softnessas if to say I’ll teach you to love me. In another, he walkswith the arrogance of a king but no wealth. Give people freedomand they invent better cruelties. Give a girlchild an axeand she comes to understand beheadings can be pleasure too.      IV.I am the axe dreaming my way through Adam’s throat.The blade and neck have a long relationship of lust. Some mornings,I would sit on the bathtub’s lip watching Adam shave his neck,silver trowel over the dark earth. The axe is only a weaponwhen knowledge fully forms. My name meaning “threshold,”“ephemeral,” “vainglory.” I am the space between resistanceand flight. The axe drags its one fang across the sun’s facebefore diving back to earth. One beast becomes two. No one knowsI can’t wound a creature without turning the knife on myself.All my life, I have given flesh to an insatiable audience, but tonightwith my fingers between my legs, no shame escapes in wails.