we were bold on our skinny legs, boxing with the boys,
spit dodging with the best of them, kicking up handstands
on vibrating rail-lines, our arms tense with summer muscles.
Our loose tongues were articulate, could ring out dares
no one could refuse, “chicken, chicken,” hanging there,
under the slippery surface. We knew insults
and where to sling them—knew whose mother smiled
when pinched behind the grocery watermelons,
whose bottom drawers hid bags of yellow Valiums.
We knew which older sisters had clung tight
to Lawrence Tuttle in the high school parking lot,
half-lit by the lights of the weedy baseball diamond;
and which had made the trip to Dr. Riche’s—we knew
who’d come home crying, who’d wished for scars to show
the disbelievers—and we had names for all of them.
All energy, all rolling motion, traveling beyond the reach
of our mothers’ eyes, we owned our small towns, our cities.
There were no great divides, no lines of separation.
II.
When we were twelve, we found Red-cherry Lipgloss
in our Christmas stockings and nylon stockings
in our Christmas boxes. When we ran at recess,
our little knob-breasts ached against us, our foreheads
shined, streaking our first attempts at beige foundation.
We powdered our noses with our new Avon compacts.
We packed away our Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew and turned
to Judy Blume, waiting, restless, for all she promised us.
We floated in that space between becoming young women
and remaining one of the boys. And somehow, somewhere,
we lost our language. Our tongues tied themselves up
in thick knots, so that suddenly, we needed each other.
We gaggled like geese, we blushed and giggled, we grew angry
now at the muddied centerfolds down at the creekbed.
We didn’t have words for our fear, our shame,
didn’t have the nerve to speak against our sisters,
couldn’t remember that we ever had, or that it had always
been about power, and that somehow, we had lost it.
Originally published in Cider Press Review, Volume 1.
