Kenny and Maxi

Dear Reader,

This poem is based on my own true life experiences with gender-dysphoria. It is equal parts sad and funny. I just wanted to let you know that it is totally fine to laugh at this… and also safe to cry. Enjoy. - CV

9pm on a school night 

The bathroom door is locked 

The fan on 

the faucet running

Eight year old Kenny is anxious 

Astonished, bewildered, curious 

Paralyzed and transfixed

Like the moment before 

Defusing a bomb (red wire or blue wire?)

Or the last shallow inhalation

Before incident lips touch 

In a trembling first kiss.

Kenny has just found

A box of maxi pads

Kenny had always been Kenny

And had no qualms with this 

Dad’s beamish boy

A Cub Scout 

And lover of little league 

Although often found

Picking daisies 

Daydreaming in right field

But it wasn’t daisies

That kept Kenny up at night 

Thinking about maxi pads

Lipstick and bras 

It was a rose 

Kenny’s secret 

A curse 

And cherished treasure

Source of shame 

And boundless love

Was a red rose

That grew somewhere 

Inside him

Just beneath the sternum

Sometimes pressing

Near the surface 

In full blossom 

With velvet pedals 

Screaming to be witnessed 

Or visited by bees 

Sometimes the rose 

Is closed tight and recedes 

To a dark cold place 

Nearly forgotten 

And sometimes 

Sharp thorns reach for the surface 

Scraping the insides

Of Kenny’s tiny rib cage 

And puncturing the heart 

But at this moment 

On a covert mission 

Inside the home’s only bathroom 

The rose is in full bloom 

Almost bursting through bone and flesh 

And Kenny is delicately unwrapping 

The mysterious maxi pad 

Kenny had known about these things 

For some time now 

But couldn’t even guess 

What they were for 

Just that they belonged

To the older and wiser sisters 

Beautiful role models 

And exemplars of teenage coolness 

Kenny had seen the maxi pads 

In purses and suitcases 

And had asked the sisters about them 

But they wouldn’t say

And the mystery endured 

All Kenny knew

Was that the sisters were cool

The sisters were girls 

And these things,

These “M-A-X-I P-A-D-S”

Belonged to that elite, sacred order 

Some time before the maxi pads

The sisters played dress up

With little brother  

Meant for laughs and theatrics 

Kenny donned a blue dress

Blush, eye shadow, lipstick 

Hair teased and blown 

Into a 1980’s femme masterpiece 

That would have Impressed

even the great Genderless god, 

David Bowie themself

Blue dress Kenny was a big hit

Got lots of laughs

and quizzical looks

But this ritual meant so much more

Than cheap jokes or

Vaudevillian antics 

The rose was soaring like never before

Some Time after the maxi pads 

A jowly old man 

In a house of god 

Will teach Kenny gardening  lessons

What healthy soil looks like

And where roses are meant 

To take root in gods garden

Because of this man

Kenny would one day try 

To hide or even kill the rose 

And purge it from his Corrupted soil 

But that’s in the future 

For now Kenny is still in the bathroom 

Decoding the mysteries of Ēostre 

Nobody knew the secret

Kenny wore that night

Beneath flannel pajamas 

And superhero underwear

And continued wearing still the next day

All through school

And the walk home 

Kenny still knew nothing 

Of menstrual blood 

Or why girls would endure 

This sticky, bulky enterprise

But that day 

Kenny’s secret maxi pad 

Meant so much more 

Than even poetry can convey

And the rose is still blooming