The day they buried her grandma
was the day a drop of red
formed between her legs
for the first time in years.
Ever since she shattered a vertebra
in the center of her back at nineteen,
“senselessly” sledding down
a winter-sweet white hill,
her body became traumatized,
seized that natural process.
The day her mother and
sister stood on a sloping field
on the far other side of the country,
draped in black fabric that hugged
shoulders and thighs as the wind blew madly,
a great black container sinking into the ditch at their feet,
she sat on the toilet in Providence, Rhode Island,
elbows to knees, staring into a stain that spread,
deeper now, into the fibers of the pearl
paper wrapped around her fingers.
For a moment she thought she saw it darken—
oxidation maybe, or the shadow
of something passing
by the bathroom window.
