Mannequin legs lined up along the walls
Flowers the shape of organs

When the men came, their boots stained the children’s playmat
We remembered to offer them tea
and to unzip our bodies from our shame

The feast begins before the guests arrive
the table ripe with fruits and metal parts

Their eyes trace the curves of our gears
like birds eyeing the shoreline and we
recite the songs our makers wrote

like the name of a mother that exists
only in user manuals

We wait for their hands
to cleave open the sheets of steel, pull them back
to show the guests that memory of the sea

that latest add-on that renders happiness
into a series of unbreakable binary.