After The Bath

by Bella Mahaya Carter

My five-year-old daughter
slides her fingers
between her thighs
holds her hand out to me and says,
"smell."
I hesitate,
bring my nose closer to her hand,
take a token sniff.
I recognize that scent.
Her vagina smells like mine.
I am surprised.
I don't know what I expected,
but I wasn't prepared for that sweet earthy scent
grounded in base notes.
"It's weird, Mama," she says,
scrunching her nose.
"We have our own smell, " I say. "It's a pretty smell."
My daughter looks at me,
uncertain.

Bella Mahaya Carter is looking for a publisher for her motherhood memoir, Secrets of My Sex: One Woman's Struggle to Give Life Without Surrendering Her Own. Her work has been published in Bandicoot, CALYX: A Journal of Art & Literature by Women, Earth's Daughters, The LA Reader, ONTHEBUS, and Tsunami. It has also been anthologized in Writing Our Way Out of the Dark. Bella lives in Studio City, California with her husband and their six-year-old daughter.