when my father lays salt

on the stairs 

of our crystalized steps, 

do the slugs 

take cover 

under the oven? 

or do they simply smell the cookies 

above them, 

burnt from my mother’s absent head? 

tell me what it’s like 

to be liquid — 

to melt from white dust 

that looks like glitter to the privileged — 

to the ones that don’t know what it’s like to be soft. 

to be malleable 

in a place that’s rigid. 

the air is ice now. 

the steps are a 

puddle. 

“be careful 

where you step,” 

my father’s 

mouth says.