It was years before I understood not all my playground friends…
Updated: 24 hours ago
choked
on unsought moisture
forced
through every mucus-lined threshold
a small girl body forms
in trusting
fetal exuberance.
Always sticky and sore.
It was so hard to jump rope.
Finally, at sixty, I see
the unabashed truths
etched across gray folds,
cradled in brittling bone.
Name the
diminishment—
the utter, unholy, unselfing.