Our mothers send us to the drugstore with a delicately
penned note signed in cursive, Mrs. Someone’s Wife,
folded and folded again, tucked into pocket or purse to deliver
without comment or consternation to the salesclerk,
a lanky white-coated man whose bespectacled head
snakes over the register. May I help you, girls?
We reach into our nascent female dignity, retrieve the note, and
with a practiced Jackie Kennedy reserve, fingertip it to him,
step away and watch as he unfolds and reads,
though only a single word: Modess or Kotex.
Brows raised in a throaty ahem,
he looks us down, up, and back down—
our secret poised between, unseen and pungent,
a resilient red resplendence, potent and portentous,
until he pivots, flapping jacket wings into a closeted cupboard,
and returns, lips tightened to a crease,
the package wrapped in brown paper,
its label and contents discreetly concealed.
Catherine Arra is the author of three chapbooks, Slamming & Splitting (Red Ochre Press, 2014), Loving from the Backbone (Flutter Press, 2015), and Tales of Intrigue & Plumage (FutureCycle Press, 2017). Her first full-length collection of poetry and short prose, Writing in the Ether, is forthcoming from Dos Madres Press. A former English and writing teacher, Arra now teaches part-time and facilitates local writing groups near her home in upstate New York.