The Puerto Rican Literature Project

My dolls have been put away like dead

children in a chest I will carry

with me when I marry.

I reach under my skirt to feel

a satin slip bought for this day. It is soft

as the inside of my thighs. My hair

has been nailed back with my mother’s

black hairpins to my skull. Her hands

stretched my eyes open as she twisted

braids into a tight circle at the nape

of my neck. I am to wash my own clothes

and sheets from this day on, as if

the fluids of my body were poison, as if

the little trickle of blood I believe

travels from my heart to the world were

shameful. Is not the blood of saints and

men in battle beautiful? Do Christ’s hands

not bleed into your eyes from His cross?

At night I hear myself growing and wake

to find my hands drifting of their own will

to soothe skin stretched tight

over my bones,

I am wound like the guts of a clock,

waiting for each hour to release me.