Mcleod logue

7th Grade Sex Education

She opened with, Sex is fun
something you never want to hear 
as a seventh grade girl—
insecure about the way your knees bang together 
when you sit and you’ve still got all 
that baby fat hanging from your frame 
like that last little bit of innocence your parents 
pray you’re preserving and she’s just 

standing there in front of you saying, 
You’ve got a secret that’s locked in 
between your legs and you can’t let it out
those legs that are held up
by growing pains and puberty and you’ve never 
even kissed a boy and sex is still a word 
you whisper because you’ve never felt 
what love is or supposed to be, 

but she’s telling you, 
They’ll rip you to pieces and throw you 
out because they can
because you can’t 
even look at yourself 
in the mirror, let alone the boys 
she’s told us only want the one thing, 
the thing you’re not suppose give anyone 
not even yourself,
not even god,
not even when they say they love you,

never ever supposed to admit you want it, 
the pleasure, the pain and she’s handing out tape,
showing you how to rip it off your skin 
like a promise that’s been broken 
like she wants the black hairs
to come out too, like she wants you to know 
the humiliation that’s hiding 
just below your veins and you’re doing it 

Harder with a smile because she told you to
over and over again, ripping it off 
and memorizing all of that pain 
you aren’t supposed to understand and she’s saying, 
This is what it’ll feel like forever and ever and ever
if you’re not careful
and you feel it 

in the back of the blue veins, murmuring, the realization 
that you already felt the emptiness 
down to the soles of your feet, 
down to the never-ending pump 
of your heartbeat because being alive is already
the hardest part, 

and she means that 
you’ll lose the elasticity, the tangibility, 
that you’re meant to be nothing 
but pure and inaccessible or else 
you’re just an object—
a flimsy, cold, useless 
piece of tape.