Scarred
Six
weeks after our first child came,
you
took me into the bedroom
and
we turned on the fan, locked the door.
You
fumbled with the buttons on my shirt, scraped against
cracked,
scabbed up nipples
that
ached on swollen, milk-filled breasts.
And
I began to shake: my sex, torn like tissue paper by the
bones
of my son’s head, had been slashed and
stitched,
sewn together like a patchwork quilt
made
of nerve endings, blood vessels,
skin
that itched as it started to heal.
I
trembled in fear and pain and love
while
you fumbled with my buttons, your fingers eager
as
a new groom’s, your organ hard and hot,
starved
for my body, my stitched up, stretched out,
war
torn body, quaking on the mattress, tight
as
on my wedding day, when you tried to go slow,
when
I paid for your love with virgin blood.
Secret Space
On my first exploration, I stole my
mother’s mirror, took off my pants,
slid
down my underwear. The bathroom tile
sent chills
up my back, and I squinted in the
glass,
tilted my head sideways: only to see
two
lips running north to south.
I wanted to look under, but couldn’t
bring
myself to touch them, to touch me, the
center of me. What if it made me dirty?
On my second exploration, I held a
tampon between my fingers, lifted a leg
to the
edge of the tub, felt my hand shake as
I
read and reread the back of the box.
Tears sprang to my eyes when I
pushed the cardboard upward; warm
blood trickled onto my fingers, and my
body spit the
“object” out, calling it foreign,
painful,
profane. My college roommates laughed.
On my third exploration, I lay on
paper, feet
braced on two oven-mitted stirrups
while I counted
clean white tiles on the ceiling,
each one whole, unbroken, unafraid.
The doctor told me to relax, and
I envied those tiles.
Pain shot out to my hips, turned
my bones to chalk; my fingers gripped
the
table. She sent me to an obstetrician.
“What’s a loop?” I asked him as he
showed
me my secret parts in a mirror, talked
of how I should
touch the opening, know my body, know
myself. My hymen, foreign as the
English channel, formed an impassible
bridge between
two countries. A map of my pain,
one I could
have read years ago had I the courage
to
look and touch, the courage to explore
unashamed.
