Diamond Forde
Lit by hazy yellow noon sputtered through our grade school panes, we file
into the gym. It squeaks awake, the sound of rubber shoes.
What holy
racket. Our voices—the hallowed harangue of small gods witnessing
power. We skip rope, indifferent to our leaping legs. Our feet
slam the lacquer and scuff little omens of ash.
In another game, we build lines from linked arms, construct a fence
of ourselves we’ll wreck
again and again. We, children. So destructive,
so miraculous.
*
Beside me, a small girl studies the field of fuzz blooming on my bare arms. We’re ten. I’m a soldering
gun and my elbows cinder to ash. I’m afraid of her mouth—thunder and steel—she speaks and her
teeth flicker like flint, her tongue slits like a straight razor. I hear the click of her voice unsheathe, says
you should shave that, then slings her own skin up for scrutiny—smooth-white, like the belly of an
airplane buffed by clouds.
We are headed somewhere.
*
The first time I ask my mom if I can shave
she lifts her jeans, reveals
the teeming tabernacle of her own legs,
the dark hairs bowed in prayer.
Trust me, sweetie, she says, no man will care,
then sees the smoldering hesitation still
coaled in my eyes, so offers to raze
my body’s curls with her clipper set.
When I tell her no, it’s not because I have learned
to bear my bristles, but because
to remove a part of myself feels like admitting
God made a mistake when he made me.