The conversionIt happened in a metal drum.
They put me there, my family
that loved me. The water
had been saved just for it, that day.
The laundry lay caked and smelly
in the flower-shaped basins.
Dishes soiled with fat and swill
piled high in the sink, and grew flies.
My cousins did not get washed that morning.
Lost in masks of snot and dust,
their faces looked tired and resigned
to the dirty lot of children.
All the neighbors gathered around our
open-air bathroom. Wives peered out
from the upper floor of their houses
into our yard. Father had arrived booming
with his cousins, my uncles.
They were big, strong men, my uncles.
They turned the house inside-out
looking for me. Curled up in the deepest corner
of my dead mother’s cabinet, father found me.
He dragged me down
