Golden Book

In the Golden Book of Knowledge
I learned what was inside me from
a naked man cut open like a frog,
revealing organs that had only made
their presence known by their
gurgling and writhing, and
sometimes by their pain.

All were shown in detail
in the Golden Book in vivid hues
like nations in a map of him.
Everything except the genitals,
which should have been among
those brightly colored innards
but were nowhere to be found.

Such things were never
mentioned in the books
they let us read. In their place
was something called a bladder,
a body part that can't offend.
I saw it all as gospel
in the Golden Book.

Sometime later in my childhood,
I was accosted by an older boy
who throttled me and warned
he planned to kick me in the balls,
a part of me the Golden Book
had never mentioned.

I hit back with my intellect,
the only weapon that I owned:
"It's not the balls, it's called the bladder,"
I said with my head still in his vise.
He proceeded to teach me otherwise.

The beating left no mark on me,
but when I learned that stupid boy was
right, my smugness turned to
shame and then a kind of grief
that came in stages, the first one anger
at myself for my credulity, and the
last, acceptance—of a world where
nothing can be trusted, even when
it's written in the Golden Book.