Then the Lord God said “it’s not good for man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.” My girlhood ended on a tightrope of warnings, the other girl-bodies acting as better radars. Her introduction to attention was a man masturbating while watching her walk home from a convenient store; she had braces on her teeth; she didn’t know what he was doing. My breath stopped at the rigidity of me. A smile, produced by the zygomatic major muscle, may show “positive” emotions like enjoyment, happiness, amusement. My greed body, its own intoxicant, regrettable my community blocked the electricity of me. The family commented openly about her body as if it belonged to them. The danger was inside the house of my gender holes in the floor me-shaped to fall in. He looked ashamed when she noticed his hand under her skirt. They were on the bus and he was a stranger. She did not call out for help because she didn’t want to feel embarrassed. Freezing was her fault. I-adult-child could be the cause of everything
Delia Tramontina (https://www.deliatpoetry.com/) is originally from Flushing, N.Y. She received her M.F.A. in writing and poetics from Naropa University in 2001. For three-and-a-half years, she co-hosted Poet As Radio, a weekly show on writing and poetry, streaming online on San Francisco Community Radio/KUSF In Exile. In 2018, her chapbook Constraint was published by Dancing Girl Press. Her work has most recently appeared in Inverted Syntax, Tinfish, and Oversound. Her chapbook Right-Left is forthcoming from Wind Wagon Press. The poem included here are from her new full-length manuscript, She Lived in This House. Other poems from this manuscript have appeared in Invisible City, Rogue Agent, and Literary Cherry.