The Red Dot That Ends the Sentence

(a micro memoir moon cycle)

1. 1. When you get your period, says my dad at his
      house across the drafty, finished attic, let me
      know if you need to purchase Kotex or
      something.
   2. I stare at the floor, the southern sun shining
      through a four-pane window. I am 12. I am
      mortified. I have already been menstruating for
      two years.
   3. Because I am so young, I learn to keep it a
      secret. On the news, they say that girls begin
      menstruating “early” due to excessive dairy
      intake.
   4. Down the block, my best friend’s dad Randy
      praises my ability to finish a whole glass of
      milk. If only, I think later, I’d left it half-full.
   5. Ten wasn’t “early” for me or my mother or my
      grandmother. Walshes start bleeding when we
      hit double digits. Fourth grade is when I learn
      to hide.
   6. In 2020, I will have been menstruating for
      twenty years. What will I have learned from
      over two hundred periods? Menstruating isn’t
      what makes me a woman.
   7. Anna says: I don’t like how my world revolves
      around men. I am a woMAN, I MENstruate,
      and now I’m going through MENopause. It
      makes me MENtal.
   8. My mother fills the bottom drawer in the
      bathroom with what she calls “period
      products.” True to form, she supplies us with
      every shape, size, and persuasion.
   9. My sister and I come from a single ovary, the
      other side taken out surgically by a kind doctor,
      second opinion, unnecessary to remove the
      whole shebang.
   10. I cruise down the only tube like a slide, the
       beginning of my beginning as a fear-free
       water-sports aficionado. Four years later, my
       sister does the same.
   11. My best friend has endured chronic health
       problems for years. These days, she heartily
       celebrates her renewed red period as a sign of
       gaining back her health.
   12. It’s a good way to tell how conservative your
       friends are, she texts, when you post about
       your period on social media and they can’t
       handle it.
   13. Praise three generations in a single body, the
       grandmother carrying a fetus with its own
       gametes. Praise the random survival of the
       plush rush, the remaining shedding.
   14. Sex ed: everything seemed scientific except for
       the moon, lunar cycles, lore until college. We’d
       circulate a dogeared copy of Inga Muscio’s
       CUNT: A Declaration of Independence.
   15. Even the “solutions” they presented were
       binary: pads and tampons. I learned later that
       some girls didn’t use tampons because it would
       mean they were not “virgins.”
   16. The musician T.I. recently boasted in a viral
       interview that he takes his teenage daughter to
       the gynecologist every year to make sure she’s
       still a “virgin.”
   17. New York legislators then introduced a bill to
       ban “virginity tests.” I wonder what kind of
       doctor, gloved hand, would conduct this “test”
       in the first place.
   18. At 29, I hear Stacyann Chin read poetry about
       Take Back the Night. Your vagina, every part
       of your body is yours, she tells her young
       daughter.
   19. My first semester of college, I buy a Diva Cup
       from the organic co-op in downtown Asheville.
       Grinning, I take it back to campus on the bus.
   20. I show the small silicone cup to my roommate
       and other friends in the dorm. Parents or
       menstruators aged 30+ are supposed to buy a
       larger size.
   21. Thirty felt like a long way off, then. But my
       cup remains half-full. No one wants an
       irritated vagina! reads Diva’s website. I’ve
       learned this is true.
   22. Our culture says men breathe sex like air, so
       rejection is something I don’t understand at 18.
       It’s weird for me, you know? he says. I do.
   23. I want to write about bodies for once without
       the gaze of an imaginary man. Did I become a
       writer to exist inside my own soft walls?
   24. At a porch party with a bunch of other lesbians,
       a new friend shows us a dancer’s Instagram
       photos. Dude, can you believe she’s a Gold
       Star?
   25. My straight male cousin asks through
       Facebook messenger whether identifying as a
       Gold Star Lesbian is even a thing. Not really, I
       say. I don’t think so.
   26. Student insurance won’t cover a Well Woman
       exam or gynecologist. Insurance won’t pay for
       a doctor to check up unless I can prove
       something is awry already.
   27. Our cycles don’t sync like we thought they
       would. In winter, we watch The Vagina
       Monologues. We’ll spend a decade in periodic
       conversations about the play’s flaws.
   28. What have I learned from 200 bright periods,
       red spots marking time on the linen garment of
       my life? My sentence leaks on, into the
       flickering stream.