Tulips

In all the medical books and all the puberty books I've seen
the drawings of the woman and her parts are pictured
as caucasian on the surface
and on layers of skin and ovaries
and tubes, she is also made caucasian colors -- pale
on paler. But the womb is pictured
as a muted mauve. When my daughter
was born, the blood poured out of me

-- bright candy. I decided all the layers
inside -- so whitely
imaged in those books must really
be tulip colors like the blood is.

I should borrow
her crayons and fix the books with cherry and orange
and canary yellow.
A tulip smells candy sweet
too -- apple green, limeade, raspberry blue -- as it
stretches its petals taut
and then relaxes its hold.

White, raised whitely, by white parents
in a white neighborhood,
I could be bringing her up the same way:
Here're pales, I could be saying, here's peach,
here's buff and ecru or even tan(!). As usual
I haven't been thinking of it much. But each
year right around her
birthday, I plant tulip bulbs.
Last year, I didn't know what color
and the bulbs bloomed
purple --
the color I'd use for the folds underneath -- the labia
that can spread, are spread -- fingers, dick, speculum, child.
And they become taut
and relax into crepe paper
at the extremes of old age just
like those tulips petals.

Copyright Louise Robertson