for my mother and my sisters
by Liana Kapelke-Dale
It’s that time of the month, as men say while women imagine
punching them on the mouth so that blood trickles down
their pretty faces but also just because We. Can’t. Stand.
Being. Written. Off. Like. That. Anymore.
*
I lay myself down, over coral-colored sheets, under the pink fluffy comforter,
on top of sky-painted pillowcases
in the bright sky-painted spring afternoon.
It’s not quite green yet, not even pale green,
but if you close your eyes
and concentrate
you smell a tiny hint of green in the air.
A hint so small it’s just a secret really
and you hear the birds conversing in their foreign tongues
chirps and trills that could either be basic
house wren gossip or the darkest of collusions –
maybe two female cardinals are planning a murder
because their men keep raiding
their wardrobes and stepping out,
looking more fabulous in red high heels
than the women ever will in their neat brown house dresses.
The hint of green is like the hint of red
emanating from me. They are sisters,
this red and this green.
*
I close my eyes and try to sleep
but my shoulders ache
my limbs tremble
while my womb is sore and bleeding
and from out of nowhere
memories begin to ping, ping at me,
sticking to my skin like overripe
berries on a hot day, as though I were
with Peter Pan and her Lost Girls
only Peter’s kind of a bitch like any other thirteen-year-old
girl – jealous and sensing my mortification
because I started bleeding
on the last day of fifth grade two years ago
and have to sneak sanitary napkins when I think
no one’s looking.
I pretend to be normal like them
but Peter’s perceptive in that cruel teenage way
so she makes little spoon catapults
and fills them with sticky
raspberries, strawberries, maybe some rainbow sherbet, and
aims them at me while the Lost Girls watch and laugh
– ping, ping –
ha ha.
How very funny is
this one-sided food fight.
*
My mother gave me a garnet to celebrate.
A deep red garnet, a bloodstone,
just like my older sisters’.
We became three, more sacred than we were before,
the triple moon goddess,
but I didn’t know.
I didn’t think about it.
I was embarrassed; tried to be matter-of-fact,
no biggie, ain’t no thang,
just mind-bending pain for a few days
every month
where I lie like a fetus in my bed
and learn that sometimes there’s just nothing
you can do to ease your suffering.
We’d all three read Judy Blume, passed it down
till it reached me: Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret.
Margaret was terrified like me, only not
like me at all because she thought she’d never
get her period – whereas I watched my body
start to shed itself and bloom
at the same time.
I shed crimson rose petals
and my breasts swelled into two pale moons
and it was beautiful
but I wasn’t ready.
My body ripened too soon,
softened and bloomed like a pink
rosebush in early spring,
before the crocuses and tulips.
I was a small child wearing giant clown shoes.
The fear.
Not able to control your body.
Not able to pretend you are what you’re not.
Not able to figure out what you are and what you’re not.
A labyrinth of neural pathways
carved into my brain as though
with a ritual knife,
and no one can tell me why I feel
so full, so empty, so messy, all at once.
I’m still a child, wishing to God, the Goddess, and Santa Claus
that I’m not really growing up,
that my mess is only a jar
of red paint I spilled
down my front.
***
Liana Kapelke-Dale (she/her) is a queer poet, mixed-media artist, ATA Certified Translator (Spanish to English), and non-practicing attorney. She is the author of the full-length collection Seeking the Pink (Kelsay Books) as well as two poetry chapbooks. Her poetry has been featured in myriad journals. Liana lives in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, with her lovely pointer-hound mix, Poet.
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