Last July I bought some opium incense Didn't know that that was once your brand Wintertime I spark it to erase the scent of your sadistic man You healed your bruises with cigarettes And drove for hours wasted in the fog To be where other women wouldn't call you things Where men wouldn't sniff you out like dogs If only just once you'd told me you don't like men who treat you like dirt Who slip you drugs intended to seduce which travel deep and cause you hurt I wonder what would happen if You learned to speak of your contempt Instead you celebrate your face By lending it to each of them The redneck in me wants to prove, the college boy is scared to move The homemaker has quit his job, the nihilist has found a god A carpenter who takes an axe, a moth who burrows into wax A chain between you and the ape - the missing link was Joan the Saint I think you are the girl who sees a quarter inch through everything Sees bodies underneath their clothes, no faces, only peeled bones Your father was the artist who took pictures every day of you And made a stop-motion film that shows you turning into him I wonder how the Pharoah knew he had to save himself for you And when I got to take his place I praise the years that burned his face