The title sounds fun, but it’s kind of a sad poem. Sorry. I just wrote it on an airplane. I might read it this weekend at Saturday Night Special, along with this poem, since they seem to both fall under the I am uncomfortable with my female body theme. I don’t write poems often, so two poems in half a year is kind of a roll for me. This weekend will be the last time Tomas Moniz hosts Saturday Night Special, so that’s sad, but it’s good motivation to get my butt down there since I haven’t been for quite a few months, and it’s always a fun and enlightening time. 

Boobs

I don’t want boobs, 
Melissa said. We lay in the grass,
Knees bent, staring at the sky.
It was very blue. The grass was very green.
The day was lazy and perfect. For now,
We matched it. I knew her terror exactly.

I looked at our legs,
Summer-scabbed and dirty. Someday soon,
These legs would grow thick and fleshy
And inexplicably bald. Strange dark smells
Would come from us, and the blood
We’d been told so, so much about. Our lankiness
Would become soft and maternal.
We would become frivolous.

We knew. We knew what women were.
The mystery was how it would happen,
By what process would our bodies come
To betray us.

Me, neither,
I said. We lay very still. The breeze
Blew the tall grass, our long, messy hair.

It was all I could say. I couldn’t tell her
About the new, tiny breasts I hid under
My thick sweatshirt all summer, my mother’s
Assessing gaze as I bathed. Her comment:
Your period might start early.
Just that, but I could tell the words chilled
Her blood the same way they chilled mine.
How I’d pulled my old doll from the high shelf
That night, held her tattered body
close until I could sleep.