Harder: A poem by Mallory Pendleton
My first dick was all pen and ink. My mother sitting at our kitchen table explaining sex, or more so, my sex, or more so, the way that my sex worked. My mother trying to answer a question. My mind thinking longand hard about the two men across the street who were oldand together and loved to sit on their porch and didn’t seem to be going anywhere, didn’t seem to be parting anytime soon, didn’t seem to be leaving each other, didn’t seem to need anyone else, any women.I understood it. Didn’t feel I needed it explained, but felt this might be the timeto ask about sex. Something about them said sex. Said ask, now is as good a time as any. So Mama at our kitchen table in August and my chin restingon top of the soft damp wood and her hand sketchinga dick in pen on the back of tomorrow’s grocery list. I recount this experience to you the other night. You ask me about my first time and this is how I choose to answer instead of telling you about the time I was undressed on that same kitchen table eight or so years later I guess but I tell you this instead and laugh as I remember understandingthe facts how it worked —the whole thing—within just a few minutes of my mother beginning, but pretending not to understand. Drilling question after question into my mother one after the other waitingfor her voice to crack a little more in everytruth. Sadistic little daughter. I just wanted something more than an explanation like my mother’s mouthto wrap around the wordspenis, vagina, erection, sperm, orgasm, orgasm, orgasm orgasm. I’d heard them before and they had made mefeel alive and I wanted her to feel alive too I wanted her to give the words over to me without apology to begin to shake less to hold the pen steady to take nothing backI wanted to set Mommy free. I laugh telling you this. silly memory :: naive daughter :: wishful girl we see nothing in our wake I leave the bedroom once a night. Every time you sit up and ask whether I am okay or where I am going before I only nod my head, shut the door, and leave. The first time I realized I was not a woman was also the first timeI wanted to just lay on the ground out of view and become dirty and become dirtier. I ask my mother about sex and her medication because I need opinions and the doses of each seem inextricable from one another today I try to believe but nothing I imagine us wide open and fearless butnothing there is no documenting womanhood without cutting the body in halfto count each widening ring between cunt and tongue orhow many times we had to grow upand stretch the blood’s dried up the doctors say noblood no sex no love or feeling no and whymake a fuss just pull on your pants and feel how easythey come up your hips now that you’ve lost the shining curveof want inside we can all become such beautiful enhancements of death if we need to unmoving save the smile the hands and each morning a hurt the end of my body both fists pressed into the soft living room floor and this is your home this has always been your home there is no leaving just the hurtwhich is different than the blood which is missing which is the missing which is different than the leavingjust the hurt which is my constantMama still flinching at the kitchen table her staggered throat still holding on to this was never going to be pretty how could I do anything but laughwe are silent breakable thingsuntil our chins slide off the wooden edgeand boom and what thenbut you asking for my firstdick and feeling powerfulas I return to you the paper-thin one sitting in my mother’sflickering hand instead of meshakinginstead of my shakingshaking instead of me