How to heal a hymen

Naomi Foster | Fall 2022

Press
the rounds of your knees together.
Get low
to the ground.
Allow your breasts
to graze the floor.
Brush your lips against the carpet.
Open your palms
and repent.
Drape yourself
in thick, weighty fabrics.

Pray away
the tumultuous act
committed in vain.
It can be undone.
It can be
undone.
Mary did it, so can you.

Go down
to the reservoir.
Submerge your tainted flesh.
Then, watch closely as stolen kisses dribble
off your spine.
Wash away the crimson stains
and cry out for redemption.

Flutter
your lashes.
Elevate the apples of your cheeks and bite down.
Laugh (if necessary),
Touch (when appropriate),
but do not give in to temptation.

Your time
would be better spent
drooling over salmon dishes
and cooing at caviar,
that you won’t swallow.
Allowing your eyes to wander
when the bill arrives.
Make him pay.

Let finance
be your first base
and coition be your last.
Afterall, a financial transaction
is as good an indicator
of love as any.

Why you want to heal in the first place?
Bask in your shame, girl.
Expose your every limb.
Put that pretty organ on display.

Hear them whisper
Tight. Soft. Wet
My dear, you are nothing more
than an adjective.

Unless, of course,
countless nights of combing
through bed chambers
have made you weary.

Or worse,
your abdomen has begun to ache,
pained by the parasite
that you host.
If nothing else,
ingest the small pale pills.

One here.
One at home.
That should kill it,
no more physical evidence of your sin
and so
it is done.
You are healed.