My mom gives me the talk. No not that talk.
My mom tells me that I am going to start growing hair on my legs and I may start to bleed even when I am not injured.
She tells me the women in our family have it bad, she prepares me to vomit every month like she did. To rely on the heating pad because pain killers have never worked for her. She tells me that when the women in our family start developing breasts they never stop until they have grown out of control like weeds.
She says she's lucky to not have gotten that curse. She tells me that she and her cousin wrapped their chests in cellophane and laid on their stomachs every night to ward them off. But I may not be so lucky.
She passes these down like war stories.
It is the same years that she teaches me how to shove my keys between my fingers and cross my legs. How to put on eyeshadow and never trust my friend's fathers and wash the blood out of my clothes.
