I haven’t written about this experience much. Approaching it like an archaeologist by digging through the thinning layers of time, and addressing the person who never was and who would now be almost half a century old, turns out to be one way of interrogating, and perhaps exorcising, the judgment felt since I was a teenager. The shame had sifted up through all the layers; I hope women today can be spared this residue.

Beneth retired after 36+ years of teaching high-school English and received her MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts in fiction and poetry in 2023.  She lives in Vermont with her partner and teenager; her grown daughter is in Brooklyn. This is her first poetry publication in forty years.