By Christina Locatelli
There are no “right moments,”
only worse ones.
I came downstairs, bloody underwear in hand
to show my mother, 7 a.m., thirteen.
I learned what a uterus—my uterus—was.
I learned why the hens run squawking
from the rooster. I’d had my suspicions.
My cousin walked next to me in the yard.
“You know how we bleed every month?”
“No,” I lied. I wasn’t sure I knew
and I didn’t want any of it to be real.
A collection of books, Childcraft books,
one titled “For Parents,” read in the basement.
It told me I would bleed. Later
the newspaper gave me stories,
stories I left out of my reports for Mom.
Forbidden knowledge secretly plucked.
I read about a woman raped by an intruder,
a boy stabbed twelve times who survived,
children who died when a bus drove
into the Wenatchee River and their siblings
born after forever knowing they were shadows.
The boy who died because his parents prayed
and only prayed and the girls kidnapped
by a bus driver, escaped years later,
one with a child. Hidden curiosity,
believing it was wrong to want to know.
I asked Mom years later why she waited,
waited to tell me about my body. She said,
“Aren’t you glad you weren’t worried about
it for months or years before? That you got
to just live in innocence?” I don’t know.
Perhaps I’ll have a daughter
who will know.
