I’ll Show You Mine If You Show Me Yours
I remember being asked
but don’t remember
what happened after that
Did I look?
Did I show?
For the bribe of a popsicle?
I remember where we stood
between the Coast Guard Station
and his family’s summer rental
on the back path to home
I remember the sting of gravel
on my bare feet
and how time stood still
It was a fall from innocence
just to be asked
worse than scraped knees
on playground pavement
More like the dog bite
I got later that summer
and the humiliation
of lifting my skirt
for the doctor to see
More like the poison ivy
all over my legs
when I went back to school
in September
A visible reminder
of a lurking threat
and the quiet mistrust
that lingered
________Colleen Redman / Poets United/ Imaginary Garden with Real Toads
June 23rd, 2019 8:09 am
This poem gave me chills, Colleen. Gut-level, gut-wrenching chills. It reminds me of a childhood circumstance. Nothing happened, but I never forgot, and was much more watchful from that time forward.
June 23rd, 2019 8:12 am
There are some memories that we wish to forget and can’t. While others, we’ve forgotten, which we want to remember. Maybe, to your younger mind, what you saw, was so traumatic, your brain shunted it aside, to protect you.
June 23rd, 2019 9:17 am
This is wonderful. I think we all can relate.
June 23rd, 2019 9:43 am
I think it was mostly harmless but not in that it was an introduction to an ongoing risk that primarily girls have.
June 23rd, 2019 11:14 am
this is a chilling poem, although initially, it starts to read as something “innocent” (I thought it might be another child, of the same age, more or less) then came to appreciate in a subtle way, how it could have been an “introduction” by someone much older –
and as others have noted, it’s something many have experienced, certainly a high percentage of girls and women, but I’d expect, boys too. Although they are less inclined to speak about it.
this is a really rounded poem Colleen – all the other instances and moments when suddenly, one is intimately and painfully aware of one’s “self” and body – and feeling rather uncomfortable. Great tension in the subtly.
June 23rd, 2019 12:51 pm
This is an experience no one should have… really chilling, and how it leaves those marks that also Poison Ivy might do.
If this was a boy and a girl of the same age, maybe it was sweeter than it seems, but the Popsicle bribe tells another story
June 23rd, 2019 3:26 pm
This is incredibly chilling and puts me in the mind of childhood experiences which linger long in a person’s memory.
June 23rd, 2019 3:32 pm
This gave me shivers. That telling discomfort, the shame that creeps into even necessary interactions…all at once realized.
June 24th, 2019 9:17 am
this is very chilling, in a way. maybe some of us can relate to it in this hard-hitting poem.
and that’s a great title to go with this work.
June 25th, 2019 10:03 am
You have conveyed the event very well with the references to time and place.
June 25th, 2019 10:29 am
Oh the murky reality! Well captured, CR.
June 25th, 2019 2:32 pm
Very sad. I remeber playning this game. He showed his first. I laughed and walked away. So sad that you did not.
June 25th, 2019 2:56 pm
I likely might have since I don’t remember showing or looking. That part was harmless and not part of my memory. Being asked was an introduction to a ongoing issue I didn’t know existed before that time.
June 26th, 2019 5:00 pm
so very sad ,as too many memories are~
June 27th, 2019 12:35 am
You probably didn’t, or you’d have remembered – but as you say, just being asked immediately changes the world.