A Curious Moon

By Molly McDonough

I

Warm salted water tumbles me like laundry to land. I swim back out unafraid. Wave after wave buoys my eleven-year-old body. It’s my favorite week of every summer—visiting my great aunt at Myrtle Beach. On the shore, my mom waves with her whole arms, cups hands to mouth and screams something. I spin, searching for sharks. See none. My mom points to her chest. I look down to see my bathing suit has slipped—nascent vigilance leaves budding breasts exposed.

During sun-drenched departure in my great aunt’s shimmering purple and turquoise golf cart, my mom reenacts the scene. Pointing at her boobs and waving. Harmless laughter at how long it took me to notice. At how carefree I was, careless. How unaware of my new parts. But I hadn’t thought much about them—beyond that they gave me somewhere to hang a string bikini. No one told me how those grownup triangles of fabric might displace my dignity. As she’s still pointing, and laughing, and waving, a passing golf cart of teenage boys waves back to her boobs. I laugh at her instead, glad someone else’s body has been exposed by capricious waves.

Keep your new body
Secret—shameful inside joke
No one shared with you

II

On the hazy school bus home, my friend and I play with a kid’s meal toy. Sixth grade is too old for toys, so we indulge ironically. A boy sits on the bench beside us. Perhaps offended that life still allows us play, even ironically, he reaches across my friend and grabs my tit. Turns my joy to shame. I brace my hands on the brown pleather bench backs and swing my legs over her. I slap at his face and head and shielding arms with both hands. I try to kick him in the dick for good measure. My mind hovers above my body—a list, push-pinned to corkboard of all the places I’ve heard it hurts or offends to hit another. When the shame groped into my body has been struck back into his, I sit back down between my friend and the window.

The bus driver returns to school, makes him get off. He cries. When I walk down the aisle at my stop, all the other children clap for me. I’m filled with pride that I defended myself—with gratitude that my first sexual assault was such an uplifting experience. My dad asks why I’m late and though I tell him I handled it, he makes me show him the kid’s bus stop, ask my friends in the neighborhood which house is his. No one answers when my dad rings the doorbell. I wonder what he’d have done if someone had. The boy never rides my bus again. I wonder how he gets to school. It isn’t until adulthood that my mom tells me my dad screamed at my principal until he put him on another bus.

Mind your bodies, girls
Never-ending vigilance
Starts before first bleed

III

In college, I sit on my dingy black futon, in my sparsely furnished living room, with a new friend after a night out. He’s drunk enough to share about his disabled mother and touch-starved childhood. I’m drunk enough to hold his hand, though I’ve told him I have a boyfriend. We fall asleep watching Phineas and Ferb on my laptop. I wake up with the hand I held plundering down the front of my jeans. My first dry-mouthed thought is that I must have somehow consented to cheating on my sweet boyfriend, who waited patiently for me to release my virginity from Christian clutch. But his hand is in my panties and we’ve never even kissed which feels like the wrong order to cheat. So I kiss him. Bring him into my bed to sleep away the rest of the morning.

For years I feel guilty about cheating, until I see him on Facebook posting the sweet surprise rooftop dinner he’s made for his girlfriend—complete with fairy lights and white pillows—and I realize—he assaulted me. She probably doesn’t know her boyfriend has assaulted someone. Does he, when it took me so long to accept he violated me? When I was friendly with him after? Maybe another woman has since taught him it’s wrong to reach into her body and steal her choice while she sleeps.

Maybe your body
Will never be yours
When you’re so careless with it

IV

After undergrad, across the country for an internship with an aerospace test lab, I go on a dinner date. Afterwards we walk on the dark, desolate beach. He kisses me—hard. Doesn’t listen to my polite objections, see my body language, feel my hands pushing at his chest, as he forces himself on top of me. I calmly contemplate if I could get my phone out, dial 911, before he noticed. How many steps I could race down the beach if I took him by surprise. Enough to say where I am and why I’m unsafe? Fresh from boot camp, he’d overpower me no problem. Is he more likely to attack me if I announce he might? Would he risk the career he’s launching with a rape accusation? Logically, it’s not worth it, but do potential rapists listen to logic?

Eventually, he lets me lead us back to our cars. Probably never thinking how close I came to bolting, that his heedlessness is a threat. I wonder what it means to be so at peace with my powerlessness—veteran of not being safe in my body.

Stand up for yourselves
But don’t be bothersome girls
Resist politely

V

In my thirties, after I’ve suffocated all the obvious children of my Christian guilt with lace and latex, sweated out purity culture with partners good and bad, I meet a man who always asks. Asks if he can kiss me. Asks if he can remove my shirt, my skirt. Asks if he can touch me. Asks if I’m okay while he’s inside me. And I learn I can say when I’m uncomfortable before counting to thirty in my head and hoping they cum first, sixty if they haven’t. My body relearns what safety feels like—slippery, silly, and vocal. That it’s something planted together, given air and light between us.

I still have a voice
My body can be mine first
We share each other

VI

In monthly massages for persistent middle back pain, my masseuse says I must work on my posture. I excuse it as “normal—better than a lot of women’s.” She rants about how “girls are always taught to hide our boobs, and it’s terrible for our backs.” She tells me “stick your tits out.”

I imagine I’ll feel seductive standing boldly upright. But the first few days of constantly reminding myself to peel back my shoulders from around my chest, I don’t feel like I’m saying, “Look at me, boys.” No, my posture says, “Fucking try me, bro.” Like I’m ready to fight again. And maybe that’s what chiseling my spine from the shame it’s curled around is—a daily battle.

Let our bodies take
The shape our proud bones planted
Stick your tits out, girls

Molly Ann McDonough is a poet and fiction writer whose work explores reclamation, resistance, and reverence outside institutional power. Her debut fantasy novel and poetry collection are forthcoming in 2026. She writes about womanhood, survival, and the contradictions we live with—seeking connection above all. Her work leans on resilience, a little levity, and a deep belief in language as a way to find each other.