MISS LINA

A Poem by blythe

(for Lina Medina, youngest mother in history.)

You were five years of Easter Sunday
purity. Bleached innocence-
you were Peru’s pearl.
Five years of lavender cotton bed sheets,
your petite body
as stainless as where you
slept.

Before a craven gentleman made a
walk-in barbershop
of your small abdomen, he husked your voice
to silence with precision
and a newly filed blade.
Young minds are ceramic pottery,
so flexible to sculpt.
Your objections are so
easy to hush.

No one bothers to relieve fragile, quiet sufferers-
when our people already have
a hard enough time paying attention to
the ones fearless enough to speak at all.

When your tiny belly was
swelling up like an
oversized mosquito bite, your parents asked the
village to vacuum out the snake
polluting your organs with an exorcism.
This did not work,
so they assumed your pregnancy to be a critical illness. Your stomach,
a tumor.

By the time mommy and daddy roll your
stroller to the hospital,
you are over seven months heavy with child.
Already in your
third trimester before the
first grade. The youngest mother (to be
documented) on
earth, you refuse every
interview. Today,
Urban Dictionary dot com defines your name as
"promiscuity".

The doctors had no viable option but to
perform a C-section, as your
undeveloped frame and
pocket-sized pelvis made it impossible to give birth
any other way. You named him
Gerardo, after your primary
doctor. Gerardo, the man who taught sacrifice in
pairs. Two baby blankets and
two stuffed teddy bears; one
was always
for you.

Gerardo grows up believing you
are his sister, not that he is a “medical miracle”
of a little boy,
just your baby brother. He is ten years old when your father,
the leaking faucet, drips the
truth. His ears feel like sour milk,
the concept too slippery for him to grasp.
He curdles as he realizes why
you made a home of his hand, why you apologized
twice a year- both on his
birthday. How you’ve been secretly
saving his baby teeth in jars,
double-checking that he wasn't tucked into bed
too tight.

Babies having babies,
the community clucks. Except for you. You,
who shed your childhood carcass to become both a woman
and a mother
on May 14th, 1939- Mother’s Day. Your newborn's
birthday. You, mother, and child
all sharing a cake. Like triplets,
or a three piece suit. The newspapers do not ask
if your father now feels like a
third wheel.

The Peruvian Times wants to know
who. Who dare try making history
by breaking a little girl in pursuit of breaking a
world record? The answer is still porcelain china-
stubborn glass shards
suspended indefinitely in your esophagus.
Honey and tea with spritzed lemon
is supposed to cure
a lost voice. But what is the remedy
of vocal kidnapping? Lina, somebody
should have told you life is not a
silent library, somebody should have
given you a megaphone.

You insist on resting the aching throat that
nests your courage
for the next seven decades.
Little girl, your tormentor is still always with you.
He lives in a penthouse apartment,
top floor of your head. He splits egg
yolks in your cerebellums
kitchen. His rent is without fail
one day early.

Lina, stand as tall as the
architecture he pushed your
heart off of. The heart
is an organ of muscle, of strength,
roughly the size of your fist. Yours pulsates
on the sidewalk, slivers of throbbing blood
vessels glitter the cement. They land
kitty-corner to the neighborhood
hair cuttery.

Recovery is betraying the barber that cut
craters roughly the size of your heart
out of your pitch. Snap his plastic
comb in two. Forget everything he ever taught
you about intimacy. On your wedding day,
cancel the appointment
at the salon. Trim
your own split ends.