Sex Ed

Lesson One

She is our sagein black and white bondage, fresh from the convent laundry.She preaches of gifts to the sixty eyes, thirty blank slates,eroding and tempering their young yearnings with a voicethat whispers its sweet nothings only with Christ.She knows all.

Intangible gifts thatare priceless, but useless, unspeakable, but virtuous,each freckled face exudes puzzlementwith the realization that down thereis actually somewhere.

The nun softenstheir blushes with the promise of redemption,rallying the class through a call to arms through purity.To eager ears and empty heads it sounds so easy.

That night, they dream.Throbbing upon waking, the rubbingof their soft and downy thighs,births a hot shame that leeches to their core.They dream of their damnation.

Lesson Two

Matrimonial dutyproduces and washes the charts of bloodfrom wedding night linen, the visceral manifestationof their gift. They will knead it from the weave,the hot water and soap callous their hands,to be unfresh again for tomorrow.

This blood mapsabsent histories. Wondrous in its austerity,these stains divulge souls scrubbed clean from confessionand bodies parched by the dryness of a wafer of breadwhich meant less to them than the pound notepressed into their small hands by an old manwho insisted a girl in a white dresssit on his lap in return.

The class wonders,knowing so little of flesh and startled by their own warmththat now rouses them from their slumber nightly,how men, as though prodding cattle, could draw blood.They check themselves, cross their legs, and discardpatent leather shoes lest they excite prying eyes.

Lesson Three

The softest nightand two girls steal to the dampness of a meadow in late March.There is glee in the looseness of their French braids and they run breathlesswith white stockings at half-mast around brazen ankles.

A solemn communionunder a haloed moon. It is too easy.One kiss and one touch, they render their gift obsolete.They are divine and perverse,ecstasy and perfection in form.

Morning and no effect is seen,but for the slightest hollow in the mossand a trace of blood that cuts the frosts,the christening of sacred ground,red on white.