Deflowering

by KateLynn Hibbard

                                                                                                                       
How sad and strange
the name for that rupture,
stripping the bloom
from the vine, the plucking
off, a beheading, really.  As if once
it is taken, the value of the plant
is less – it withers, dies.
It hurt, I do remember that,
the darkening blossom
in my underpants, and the boy
I was with – it meant nothing
to him, my flower as
inconvenience, as obstacle
to his pleasure, since
being the girl, of course
I wouldn’t have any, and if I did
I must be slutty, and so I had to 
take my place in the hierarchy
of good girl sluts
and bad girl sluts, and
O my dear, dear girl, I see you
rushing off to lie with him
on the cold vinyl backseat
of his dark blue Chevy
and I wish you an armful
of blood red roses, their thorn-
laden faces fierce
in their opening,
the petals magically intact.


* * * * *

KateLynn Hibbard’s books are Sleeping Upside Down, Sweet Weight, and Simples, winner of the 2018 Howling Bird Press Poetry Prize. Some journals where her poems have appeared include Barrow Street, Ars Medica, Nimrod, and Prairie Schooner. Editor of When We Become Weavers: Queer Female Poets on the Midwest Experience, she teaches at Minneapolis College, sings with One Voice Mixed Chorus, and lives with many pets and her spouse Jan in Saint Paul, Minnesota. Please visit katelynnhibbard.com for more information.