Susan Daniels Poetry

So much we call memory
is us rewriting ourselves
as the center of a story,
when perhaps we were peripheral
to something bigger unfolding
just beneath our own skins, and unknown.

In this story I am both central and peripheral:
that day I grew up
beginning like the day before
with orange juice and a trip to the gym
before work to fight the three-pound gain
on the scale no low-carb/high protein diet
could explain; that and my need for so much sleep
drove me to the aisle with the EPTs
next to the FDS and the maxi pads–
everything female jumbled together with Vagisil
and Monistat, where all things girl are displayed
as a treatable condition–blood, itch and odor
masked in flowers until  sweet.

I do not know if I passed or failed that test
but it is how and when I grew up,
that changed color shading the names
I have called myself since;
the sharper sense of smell,
the memory of traded oxygen
and sustenance so deep
I can feel a lie fall from a mouth
I helped make, and the other things mothers do–
the way I learned to rock and hold,
and how songs spun from my mouth
I did not remember ever singing,
only hearing as a lullaby.