“Nice ***.” It might be obscene to begin a poem with ***** the way strangers in the sidewalk begin conversations with Anatomy or Algebra when they ask for an exchange of numbers like old friends meeting at the subway on a hot Sunday afternoon. Quit Science when the only thing you know is to scrutinize a woman’s body, identifying which parts would satisfy your carnal desires.
When I was nine and the curves in my body were not yet defined, when “***” was just a word I read on forms we used to fill to know if one is male or female, I happened to pass by a group of boys who laughed at the top of their lungs over a bottle of ***** after one of them remarked something about my “flower” when I wasn’t even holding one.
I did not fully understand what they meant but then and there I felt fear, then and there I learned that a flower’s not a flower in the context of profanity how they grinned as they masked their grim faces with laughters and remarks like predators lurking in the shadows of their sisters, wives, and daughters.
Looking back and thinking how I was violated the first time when I was nine and my curves were not yet defined, I laughed because twelve years later here I am, still replaying inside my head the voices of men who acted as if they own my body, who decided to steal from me what is only mine to give as they wait for another prey to caress their whiskers in the sidewalk.