submitted by Colleen Clark, Ashfield, MA
I was a simple child once. I lived in a house.
When I was 11 I sat on a toilet at my Grammar School. I investigated the smell of dried blood in a paper lined receptacle.
I didn’t understand as I didn’t belong, not yet.
When I was 12 I sat on our toilet at home reading directions I had pulled from a box of tampons. It seemed easy enough.
I didn’t understand that life as I knew it was surreptitiously eroding.
When I was 13 I sat on the lap of a friend’s father, his oversized hands cupped my emerging breasts keeping me from leaving.
I didn’t understand my body or him.
Filth and grime, blood and hair; simplicity hid and what was once still is vacant.
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