UNKNOWING

by Vera Kewes Salter

At fifteen she had no language to describe

her own body when the man lured her

into his cabin and caused unknown

sensations to radiate through her.

She tried to write about this in her green leather

diary with the gold lock. Her boyfriend made her

shred it and pitch it into the waste bin at the underground

station because she was not able to say

if she had real sex. She sobbed every evening

as he harangued her on the phone.

She is glad her three-year old granddaughters know 

to say they wash their vaginas each night in the tub.

* * * * *

Raised in England to parents who were refugees from Europe, Vera Kewes Salter moved to the United States in 1969 and married into an African American family. Together with a PhD in sociology these varied perspectives inform her work. She writes at the Hudson Valley Writers' Center. She has been published recently in Right Hand Pointing, Writers Circle 2, and Red Eft Review.