In sixth grade health class we were separated 

from the boys we grew up with 
who had suddenly that summer 
become strange. We learned 

how our pear-shaped uterus 
prepared each month, walls thickening 
with blood and other nourishing stuff, 

made a cozy nest for an egg 
which would then be disposed of. 

On Fridays, at junior high dances, 
our dresses hid the white hammocks 
of sanitary cotton strapped in the desperation 
of our thigh-gap. 

In corners of the dimly lit gym 
boys grew extra limbs, suction-cup lips, 

snapped bra straps, hickey’d our necks, 
cooed If you really love me 
along with Stevie Wonder, 

gyrated hips like acne’d Elvises, 
promised A stairway to heaven 
if we would loosen our grip—

fumbling fingers testing bra hooks 
and zippers. When I was young, 

each day was a flower to be plucked, 
a scent to be inhaled, for a time 
overpowering the stench 
of impending adolescence. 

* El Camino de Esmeralda (watercolor and acrylic, 2021) by contemporary Latina artist Danelle Rivas

Betsy Mars

is a prize-winning poet and photographer, an editor at Gyroscope Review, and publisher of an occasional anthology through Kingly Street Press. Her writing has appeared widely online and in numerous print anthologies, and has been nominated for Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize. Betsy’s photos have been published in Rattle (as the Ekphrastic Challenge prompt), in Redheaded Stepchild, and as a cover image for Spank the Carp.

Her chapbooks and small press publications (Kingly Street Press) are available on Amazon. In addition to her chapbook collaboration with Alan Walowitz (In the Muddle of the Night, 2021), she recently worked with artist Judith Christensen on an installation in San Diego which is part of an ongoing exploration of memory, identity, home, and family. Betsy also works as a substitute teacher, and as a cat wrangler in her spare time.