my father taught me that girlhood should be gentle. he'd put bandaids on ripped skin and felled the trees that bloodied me. apples were cut the way he never did before just so i could make my fingers sticky with sugar and juice and my mouth uneven with the slices. he taught me propriety but never caught me sneaking swigs of his liquor. and of all the days i curled up in his bed during a storm, i was only scared for two. seven lost sons and he knew childhood well.

he didn't know girlhood.

my mother knew. she'd hem the rips in my skirts and push the needle in too far: she bruised peach youth skin. drew tangerine blood. she taught me how to wield a knife to slice growing things but she never specified whether it was supposed to be fruits or boys. (good daughter i am, i did both.) she called me severed hand, her whittled knife, her belladonna bloom. girlhood is poison cocooned in petals, a ripped clover, three-leafed and unassuming. her, my matron, my pedagogue. we step in grandfather clock synchronizations: quarter to eleven we strike, fifteen minutes until the universe takes back control.

but she swaddles me still, wraps my youth around me like an amniotic sac. thinks of me still like a child. and yet youth does not equate to childhood. i am caught between the vestiges of my ribboned girlhood and the looming vastness of this new world.

i beg my mother, clutch at her hems, wait for her day in and day out, slumped against her locked door. sobbing and heaving but she will not budge. my mother understands girlhood well. it is poison but it is the prettiest. girlhood is mithridatism and now i must skip my doses. i must convulse and shake and watch the eclipse of my whole world. this is growing up. this is womanhood. my mother understands girlhood well and she will not open the door. i am on her doorstep, even now. i am trembling. even now.

i am begging, even now.