Vagina First

by Emily Rinkema

Two weeks after my twentieth birthday my mother begs me not to move to Montana by myself because she says I will be eaten by a grizzly bear, vagina first, and I laugh as I pack and ask if this is supposed to be a metaphor, imagining some cowboy going down on me in the parking lot of a dive bar called Bucky’s or Lucky’s or The Watering Hole, and she says no, it’s not a goddamn metaphor, and grabs my Camp TakaWaka tank top from my hands and folds it as if she works at GAP, and tells me that it’s a dangerous world out there, says things happen that we can’t plan for, says, for example, grizzly bears can smell menstrual blood from 20 miles away, and she tells me even bear spray and bells, both of which she ordered for me and has already packed in the bottom of my bag, won’t scare them off once they smell me, tromping through the mountains like a bloody dumpling, and I say, “Enough, Mom! I get it,” and I tell her I don’t even like to hike, that I can take care of myself, that I’m not some little girl anymore, and she says, “I know,” and then more quietly, “But that won’t matter to the grizzly,” and she curls up on my bed, legs and arms tucked in like they tell you to do if your bear spray fails.

About the Author

Emily Rinkema lives and writes in northern Vermont, USA. Her writing has recently appeared in Fictive Dream, Okay Donkey, JAKE, and Frazzled Lit, and she won the 2024 Cambridge and Lascaux Prizes for flash fiction. You can read her work at https://emilyrinkema.wixsite.com/my-site or follow her on X, BS, or IG (@emilyrinkema).