In German class they asked her to describe her most embarrassing moment, so she would learn verbs like “to blush” and “to cringe.” She was only fifteen, and the most embarrassing thing that would ever happen to her had yet to happen. Still, she had a story to tell.
Quite recently, she told them in German, at someone’s birthday party, she had gone off by herself in the large house, followed a long hall to a powder room with a full-length mirror extending over the entire wall with the sink. She was embarrassed (“verwickelt”) to watch herself sitting on the toilet having a pee. But what really made her blush (“erröten”) was when someone — a BOY — opened the door and did not see her, no, but saw her horrified reflection (“Spiegelbild”) in the giant mirror, and heard the tinkling sound of her urine in the bowl, and her shriek.
It was not until years later that something even more embarrassing happened to her, something too embarrassing ever to talk about.
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Jessy Randall is a rare book and manuscript librarian in Philadelphia. Her poem “A Day in Boyland” currently appears on the internet in The Blue Moon Review. Other poems are forthcoming in Bogg and Antietam Review.