I always thought that a girl who was a virgin
Would look different from a girl who wasn’t.
For a long time, I wondered what the difference might be.
When I was little
My mother told me that a girl’s private parts are called a box of pearls
When I got older and we learned about reproduction
I asked my mother
and she told me the same thing that our teacher Mr. Mahmoud told me
Everyone felt bad for her when they broke up.
“We’ll take you to a doctor for a virginity test. We need to know if he left you because you slept together,” her father said.
I invented something called “The red lines”,
And I imagined them drawn on my body.
So that I could mark the boundaries that shouldn’t be crossed.
I learned one day that my neighbor whom I used to play with was getting married.
She was almost 16 years old.
“I’ve got something that my husband will take from me and throw away tomorrow morning,” she said.
I’m not a woman, right?
I’m no longer a woman, am I?
How can I be a woman,
If I don’t get my period every month?
A little thing was gone,
And with it a lot of blood was lost.
My secrets were gone with it.
Where will I keep my secrets now?