A girl between eleven and fourteen (a gauzy and vibrant age) will enter menses. She will have been (awkwardly) informed by teachers conscripted by the state. The girl will inscribe (in carefully rounded letters) her question about tampon strings that snap. She will slip her (intimate) concern into the stack of anonymous anxiety. The teacher (reading this question) will frown. She already reported (vaguely) (dismissively) that tampons never get stuck. The question will be supplanted by (simpler) ones judged important enough to answer.
A girl between eleven and fourteen will have seen the menstrual pads of friends and the blood that is left behind.
Laine Cunningham is a three-time recipient of The Hackney Award. Her short prose and poetry have been published by Reed, Birmingham Arts Journal, Fiction Southeast, Wraparound South, As You Were, The Bangalore Review, MacQueen’s Quinterly, Pensive, and Garfield Lake Review, and is forthcoming in Ilanot Review.