How many times have you had sex?
asks my daughter in the bathroom.
She guesses four or five, maybe six.
Then she asks
how do you know
if a man is going to rape you?
I still tuck her in at night with her Barbies.
She's afraid of spiders crawling in her bed,
the random thumps on the wall made
by the man next door and his girlfriend.
I know she's been digging through my Kotex pads,
perhaps imagining them to be pillows for her dolls,
the tampons a sort of emergency candle
equipped with an extra long wick.
In the morning, I notice a few grass blades of hair
Poking out from under her arms, freshly watered.
She tells me that she wants to start wearing a bra.
Her fingers are clumsy yet with the wear of crayons,
and so I must fasten the hook,
wondering what exactly it is that I am holding back,
or training to stay in place.
And after school, she brings her 5th grade Maturity Book
home, opens it to the chapter about the penis.
This is my homework tonight, she giggles.
She asks me to read it to her,
this new kind of bedtime story.