Karen Breen

Late Bloomer

You said when people ask me my favorite Japanese food
and I have to tell them I haven’t had any,
it will be embarrassing.

But I played with dollhouses well into sixth grade,
my new brown blood sticking to my pajama bottoms
a month after my twelfth birthday.

Thinking it was diarrhea, I stayed home from school,
rubbing my everything down there bright pink with a washcloth
so, unperturbed, I could line up my happy meal toys
throughout a hip-height plastic mansion.

All day long I tottered a few degrees east or west of the magnet,
only getting sea legs when the washcloth pulled up blood.

I’m a vegetarian now, but that’s just an excuse.
I never liked fish to begin with.