[Shame, little sister]
Shame, little sister, remember hiding our words between the mattress & box spring, thinking no one would look there (& of course they did)? Some parts of us still live scratched on cheap scrap paper, afraid of discovery. How old were you when you first noticed that other families did not keep a bone bowl on the table, did not gnaw every shred of meat clean down to the glistening cartilage? Shame is the voice that asks me why I’m crying, not because it wants to know, but because it wants me to know it’s always watching. The voice that followed me to Mammoth Mart when we picked out my first junior department bikini, then wouldn’t allow me to leave the house in it. Are we all just trying not to admit that every day is terrifying? Mother is eighty-six & won’t say period. Yet still I avoid the body, the liquid shames that pool between thighs, collect in the hollows. At the new moon, our priestess had us write the names of our shame-sources with beet juice on a white plate, &, together, we washed them away. At midnight, I released the rinse water into a storm drain.
M.A. Scott is the author of Hunger, little sister, forthcoming from Kissing Dynamite. Her work has recently appeared in Cease, Cows, The Westchester Review, and DMQ Review. She grew up in Rhode Island, currently lives in the Hudson Valley, and likes to spend time with trees.