I'm not a woman yet, but I've felt like one

Since third grade. As in, this body belongs

to strange men & even stranger parents

of friends who somehow believe it a crime

for girls to have breasts at age eight,

when Mom discussed my development

on the phone with Adela’s mom, who said,

it’s perfectly fine, maybe she’s an early

bloomer, maybe she had too many

pomegranates when she was younger.

In my booster seat I mistake her words for maybe

she is a pomegranate & come to believe

I am one: an ovary of jeweled blood preserved

for another life incoming. I have come to believe

I am swelling, waiting for a man to crush

my blushing exoskeleton raw with his hands.

To have him devour the sweet seeds inside,

& be shat out after use. Perhaps the reason

I find comfort in fruit metaphors is that

I am one: still flowering, life-making a destination

I have yet to reach. & perhaps this is why I will

never bed with a man: I am scared to become fruit,

to realize my calling, to lose the blood I have born

from my own marrow & pass it off to a seed.

Perhaps my consummation begins here, alone,

with the one life I own: this body, built

beautiful without model by my mother

& my mother’s mother & all the women

past who have birthed me. It is for them

I cannot fruit without flowering first.