Mandy Prell

Where I am dark

I brave a bikini freshman year on a band trip. Perched
on Matt’s shoulders in the hotel pool, poised to
dismount Rachel in a game of chicken, my most
private place presses against the nape of Matt’s neck.
His wet curls flirt with my inner thighs.

I slathered Nair on my Italian pubic hair to prepare.
The phosphorous yellow odor alerts the house that I
lay bottomless on a discolored beach towel in the
bathroom—legs spread before the small standing
mirror my mother uses to cloud the back of her head
with hairspray. I avoid eye contact with myself. After
each dark, loopy curl is swept with a rag, I replace the
mirror face down in the drawer. Lest it share what it
saw with my mother.

                                   ***

I’m fifteen, Josh’s twenty-one. We’ve only seen each
other in our server uniforms: white button-down
blouse, black vest, bowtie, slacks, shiny black dress
shoes. Hair up, out-of-the-way.

We blush about dreams while popping tiny dollops of
elegant, patterned butter out of plastic molds. I carry
American Spirits because he put his hand on my lower
back on a smoke break.

Later, I lay in the back of a mint-green van in the cold
garage of his mom’s house while he stands and enters
me. I think – this can’t be right. The second time, I
guess it is.

                                   ***

Can I wear a knee-length gown over a bathing suit top
while giving birth? My midwife can’t conceal her
expression. You’ll be in the tub, she says, you won’t
care who is there or what anyone sees.

I do care. I don’t want a host of people staring at my
vulva while my daughter’s lips touch mine. No one is
entitled to the privilege of hearing us cry.

                                   ***

A man narrates what I cannot see over the draped blue
cloth. My daughter’s birth is fed to me through his
perspective, despite my plea for women-only. Legs lay
limp and open under the O.R. spotlight, my vulva on
display under clear cling wrap. I play the music I
imagined in my mind while hushed whispers fall over
hands inside my uterus. Fingers dip, pull, and press—
my organs weight stainless steel dishes. Sleep beckons
through the IV. I strain to deny it as my baby is taken.

Knuckles knead sewing stitches in a smile while I try
to smell her.

Mandy is a feminist poet and forest school teacher. She lives with her daughters, spouse, and cats in a historic, haunted train town outside of Louisville, Kentucky. Mandy holds an M.S.Ed. from Johns Hopkins University and an IndieMFA in Advanced Poetry through Writing Workshops. Her poetry has appeared in Writers Resist, The Pointed Circle, The Bloomin’ Onion, Ink in Thirds, Gathered Words, a Scotia Roads Books anthology, Gnashing Teeth Publishing zines and anthologies, and on Paragraph Planet. Mandy was named a 2026 Wolfson Press Poetry Chapbook Competition Finalist. Website: https://mandyprell.my.canva.site/  Instagram: @mandyprell

Banner Art:
Photo by Aitziber Ruiz de Eguino, Unsplash, 2023

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