Inevitable
when I dropped my 12-year-old off at her first homecoming dance, I tried not to look her newly-developed breasts, all surprise and alert in their uncertainty. I tried not to imagine her mashed between a young man's curiousness and the gym's sweaty wall. I tried not picture her grinding off beat/on time to the rhythm of a dark manchild; the one who whispered “you are the most beautiful girl in brooklyn” his swag so sincere, she'd easily mistaken him for a god.
Copyright © 2019 by Mahogany L. Browne. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on February 7, 2019, by the Academy of American Poets.
“This is probably one of the most embarrassing moments for my daughter but it became a timestamp for my uncertainty as a mother of a pre-teen. Using couplets required me to keep it brief, with a structure that confined the reader until the gut-punch ending. I wanted to offer an honest and introspective moment of a girl growing into a young lady, and I try not to place such a heavy expectation on such a seemingly flash-in-the-pan moment but the more I edited this piece, the more I realized I was only a mirror of my own memories. I experienced this sort of sexual awakening in my teens but it was because of her that I was able to voice the fear of losing (my daughter) as she experienced such a fleeting sweetness. This confessional snapshot became an offering to my daughter. I felt I had little control over the romance that would color her womanhood—the same way, I'm sure, my mother felt about me.”
—Mahogany L. Browne
Mahogany L. Browne
