by Rebecca Brock*

She didn’t say it to me.
But I was old enough to understand
it pertained to girls like me,
to the women we would be—the not
born with it, I mean. I’m trying to explain why,
when the house painter sent me a video
of him playing the saxophone
in a dim but freshly painted
dining room, naked
beneath his white overalls,
his eye contact
with the camera as he wailed—
I really didn’t think it meant
what he probably meant it to mean—
he’d talked to me about his daughter,
about his wife. He’d be back in the spring ,
to finish the outside of the house.
When he fell off someone else’s roof
and broke his foot, I was surprised
by how safe it felt
to ask for my deposit money back.
When he said I was beautiful
I found out I still believed
I should say thank you.

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Rebecca Brock’s work appears/will appear in CALYX, Mom Egg Review, Threepenny Review, Whale Road Review, and elsewhere. She holds an MFA from Bennington College. Recently, she won the Spring 2021 prize at Sheila-Na-Gig and was a semi-finalist in the New Women’s Voices contest at Finishing Line Press. Idaho born, she is raising her two sons in Virginia and still isn’t used to the humidity. You can find more of her work at rebeccabrock.org.

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*Rebecca Brock is a reader for SWWIM Every Day. This poem was accepted before she became a reader.

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