Dusting the Books

What I knew about sex
I didn’t learn from my mother.
She gave me a book
and told me to read it,
which I did, without comprehension.
Sex, I figured,
was something embarrassing you did
at the doctor’s office
while he watched
to make sure you did it right.
That’s how you got a baby.

There was an assembly one day after school
to teach girls about periods
and other personal matters,
but you had to bring along your mother,
and mine had just had another baby
so I figured things out on my own.

Romantic love was something
that just happened to you somehow.
That’s what I guessed.
My mother never mentioned it.
She just handed me a dust cloth
and told me to get started.
I was so easily distracted
it would take me all day.

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Pat Hale is the author of the poetry collection, Seeing Them with My Eyes Closed, and the chapbook, Composition and Flight. Her work appears in many journals, including CALYX, Sow's Ear, Dogwood, Connecticut River Review, and Naugatuck River Review, and has been awarded CALYX's Lois Cranston Memorial Poetry Prize, and the Sunken Garden Poetry Prize. She lives in Connecticut, where she serves on the board of directors for the Riverwood Poetry Series, Inc., a group which has brought poetry events and festivals to central Connecticut for more than a dozen years.