/ Poetry /
Slept with every boy that I could name,
including all my boyfriends. Her name became
a punchline in the neighborhood.
I personally saw at least two sex tapes of her.
They were gruesome but the boys
thought it was funny to show me.
The girls laughed too, imagining a gulf
of difference between her and themselves.
My mother thought of her as a sort of injured bird.
That thing looks sick and you better take it back outside!
Sometimes the girl from my hometown would come to my house
anyways. She was very polite and smelled like coconuts.
One time, I asked her about those boys.
The girl from my hometown said it’s different for me,
I’m pretty and smart and at least when the guys
treated me like you know they did they did it
with ownership. They claimed me in public.
Their excuse was that they loved me.
They didn’t need an excuse with her.
When I started to write about my life,
I won awards for it. People called me brave.
I had money and poems and a way out.
Whatever they did to her they did in shadows.
We all knew. No one spoke of it.