it’s you, your lipstick’d matriarchal arithmetic dividing, subtracting meager domestic wages on a niggardly patriarchal abacus that does not add up nor divide out evenhandedly from your hand it’s you, your hand that demands your handmaid sisters enter separate doors to sit lowly your floors before separate plates, separate knives, separate forks, separate glasses, made to eat separately sitting your cold matriarchal floors too many their bodies your floors, sitting there too many of their hopes your floors, dying there and you wonder why he raises his hand at you, the mother of daughters and daughters-in-law you who desecrate every universal law of dignity against your daughters, your daughters-in-law
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