Naked, In Front of The Bathroom Mirror

…she stands. Gazing at her own waxen face.

Gingerly, raising the index finger

Of her right hand, she presses

The tip against her right temple.

Tracing a line from the corner of

Her eye, the fingertip begins a slow

Journey down her cheek, and stops

On a scar, about half an inch long.

A scar. A memory. A story.

This one from an uncle, who, in an excess of

avuncular affection had tried to kiss her. She refused.

Miffed, he sank in his teeth instead.

Farther down the pale translucent skin

Of her throat, her finger traces

Other scars, other memories, other stories.

Down her chest, following the swelling curve of her

rounded right breast, tracing the blue vein

leading up to the pink aureole of the nipple.

It stops at an angry round spot where her father

Had stubbed out a burning cigarette when she tried to

Stop him from hitting her mother. She still

Remembers him collapsing, as usual, into a drunken

Stupor on the couch later. After all these years

The scar still stings. She can still see her

Mother take off his shoes as he snores,

And pull a shawl over him to keep him warm.

Down, farther down her midriff, the finger resumes

Its journey over her stomach, below the navel and stops

Over the gash - ugly, jagged, snakelike. The memory

That tore her apart, body and mind.

She can still hear her unborn baby screaming

As her husband rips it out of her womb with a 

kitchen knife, snarling, "A boy next time, you FUCKING bitch!!!"

So now the fingertip moves down her lower

Abdomen, lower down, and lower, and disappears in

The dark, silken depths between her thighs,

And stops right at the mouth of her vagina. Eyes closed,

Her hand waits there for a few seconds,

And then she pulls it out, holding up a

Red fingertip. She recalls reading somewhere that a

Truly liberated woman is one who can taste without

Disgust her own menstrual blood.

Gingerly again, she holds up her fingertip

And looks into her eyes in the mirror. In the fluorescent

Light of the overhead lamp she can see them -

Dark, fluid pools with a subtle hint of swirling

Quicksilver. Her eyes close again; her lips part and close

Gently around the red fingertip, while her left hand

Reaches up to the shelf beside the mirror, feels

Around until it finds what it wants -

Sudden violent retching wracks her slender frame.

 

She doubles over the edge of the bathroom 

Sink, clutching her stomach, that, revolted beyond

Her senses, spews out her agonized 

 

Guts in a projectile stream of foul green 

Bile. 'Stupid fucking magazine article,' she whispers

As she straightens up, shaking like a leaf in a gale.

 

'Yo bitch! Y'comin' t'bed or n…ot?!?' 

Her husband yells, tongue slurring over the syllables, lolling

On their bed shaped like a shark's jaw.

  

Her eyes snap open. The girl in the mirror gasps

Softly, in a quick intake of breath. As if in slow motion, her 

left hand rises. It is holding a naked razor.