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.