Snorkelling on the Great Barrier Reef the first time I used a tampon
I remember staring down the archipelago
of blood spots in the hotel bathroom, the night
before we caught the boat to Green Island.
My mother hovered outside the door,
rattling a box of tampons stacked
like bleached staghorn, repeating
the generational myth of shark attacks.
Then, dreams of being left on the sand
to burn up like a gift shop starfish,
the unthinkable driftwood of my body
beached and baking. The next day,
I waddled backwards into the water,
green fins slapping, part fish, part woman,
uneasy siren. At first, I felt skewered
by the cotton spear sitting below my cervix,
but slipping out beyond the jetty, the knot
of discomfort slowly ceased. Mask snug,
I peered down at alien continents of coral,
like an astronaut through a shuttle window.
As the landscape came into focus, there was
the rush of the familiar: curves of rock,
the womb of cave with foetal eel, anemones
clotting beneath the pubic curls of seagrass.
The reef was a woman, vibrating with life.
My body was her shadow on the surface,
our salts mingled, thighs waving.
Bex Hainsworth is a poet and teacher based in Leicester, UK. She won the Collection HQ Prize as part of the East Riding Festival of Words and her work has appeared in Nimrod, The McNeese Review, Sonora Review, and trampset. Walrussey, her debut pamphlet of ecopoetry, is published by Black Cat Poetry Press.