down in me

I developed late for a child but probably too soon for adolescence. It’s like I was 12 and showering when for the first time I realized there was a secret nook at the far end of my torso, like when an infant I discovered my own toes. I gave myself a stinging infection with the bar soap twice that year. I could not be pried. I prodded with toothbrush handles, inspected with compact mirrors, opened wide and closed tight my legs. Life rocked with the unease of discovery, I was fascinated, started foregoing panties, flirting with the slimmer shampoo bottles. The bathroom breathed new, not since the days of the primary-hued stool we stood on to reach the sink to wash, to make fists into liquid hand-soap bubbles.

Is it for the Spaniards’ rape of all my grandmothers? Because I’m not pristine, I’m dirty, my creases and holes dark, and yet they want in them. My mouth a torrent of steely breathy truths never spoken by a lady. And yet I want them in them. They fucked my mothers and now I will fuck them. Where there were drawn knees and repulsion there is now submission. You can’t rape an open womb. I’m begging for it and I can’t say I blame them, I don’t; I too want to fuck new, those compelling differences, I want in them.