By Toni Andi White

no one ever taught me how to enjoy being a woman

My mother used to sleep in her underwear

blanketed by my father's thighs

and whenever she'd answer her bedroom door,

her words would slip from her mouth corners

then fall to her palms.

I sleep naked

trying to breathe like my mother.

No one ever taught me how to enjoy being a woman

so I run down my fingertips trying

to gather my web-like thickness as