I seem to remember a swimming pool. My whole childhood was lived between sky-tiled underworlds. We’d carpool to Bangkok, pay the hotel’s fee, cart our toys—soakable throwers, flippers, foam boards. Me and my friends loved to play mermaids in the deep end. We’d spend hours choosing our mystical powers, the shimmery hues of fins and boob shells, dive for dropped rings. But this day our moms made us get out right at the beginning. Slippery, our skins dripped into the umbrella shade. Mom lowered something into her glass of water, a white tube on a string. It plumed into a huge skirt. It didn’t hurt, she insisted, or at least not much. With this cotton plug we could still go swimming. We could start with pads if we wanted, when the time came, which our moms thought would be soon enough. And I remember sensing from then on the secret bloom of my insides, the fuse of a string, how we couldn’t keep pretending.
–
Kimberly Gibson-Tran has writing appearing or forthcoming in Passages North, Baltimore Review, Third Coast, 2River, Reed Magazine, The Bombay Literary Magazine, and elsewhere. She was a finalist for Rowayat’s 2025 Poetry Contest. Raised by medical missionaries in Thailand, she now lives in Princeton, Texas, with her husband and cats.