DAUGHTER: Oh dear God! I have missed my period.
It came neither a week ago nor a day ago. I pray it does
in the next hour. In the blink of an eye, my life has doubled,
and I am anxious and troubled by this double trouble.
You do not own me, yet your words are disowning me.
I have decoded the hidden meaning in your words. I quote:
“Do not step into this home if you are pregnant.”
[Fidgeting with fingers and tapping feet]
On this dreaded day, my predicament is frightful.
I can still hear your tone piercing through my skin
like a warning tattoo, unpopular and etched forever.
I never was keen to learn the division until now:
The wanted pregnancy and the unwanted pregnancy.
I have no adult choice—you don’t want it.
Your voice thunders in my belly to get rid of it.
Yes, abort or do not step into this house again. Your words
are as vague as the lover I bedded, and it is I, your daughter,
who has to read between the lines and decipher the abortion.
That’s what you are hiding between your clear command:
“Do not put your feet into my house if ever pregnant.”
[Middle finger]
So what other option does a sixteen-year-old have?
It is too late now for you to give any warnings.
You could have told me about the stupid ovulation.
You could have warned me about the desires and wet dreams.
Instead, you focused on hygiene, silence, and secrecy.
Why would it not occur to you to mention that I, too,
will be in heat like that timid cow in the shed or the dogs—
that I will yearn for it when the opposite sex flirts with me.
Instead, here we are, the accused and accuser of my sin,
I, legs wide open, for the doctor to touch, poke, and intrude
until I can step again into your house of no pregnancies.
Meanwhile, you pray to the one who conceived without sex.
[Peace sign]
About the author:
Gloria D. Gonsalves is a poet, author, illustrator, and occasional columnist. She has four poetry collections: Even Flowers Know That Water is Useless Without Roots (2023), Let’s Go Walking in the Storm (2020), Let’s Go Dancing in the Light (2017), and Mists of Sense Require Fierce Poesy (2014). Her poems have appeared in Brittle Paper, Galway Review, Eclectica, the Decolonial Passage, The Mantelpiece, Consilience, Collateral, Wordpeace, and other literary magazines, journals, and anthologies in Africa, Europe, and the USA. She is also the founder of WoChiPoDa, an initiative to instill the love of poetry in children. You can read more about her at www.gloria-gonsalves.com.
Part of our Fall/Winter 2024 Issue. New stories, poems, and essays now through December 2024.
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Tangled Locks Journal 
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This is beautiful and so true. Times conversations of sex, horniness and attraction are given importance discussion between families and their children.
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