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My Most Private Place
By Patrick Julius
Just a tiny bit they stole from me.
Just a tiny bit of flesh they shred,
Just a tiny bit of skin they threw away,
Just a tiny bit of blood I bled.
Just a tiny little scream I cried,
As the tiny little blade incised
In my most private place.
And since then, years have passed;
The scar itself is thin, hard to detect.
The scream, the pain, they didn't last;
The memories have long since left.
But still there is a piece removed
From my most private place.
Today, I can only imagine
How big that tiny piece would be,
How it would make me beautiful.
Today, I can only imagine
The joy that piece would bring to me,
Its softness at a lover's touch.
Today, I can only imagine
How it would feel... so wonderful.
In truth, I really only know this much:
That piece they stole from me is gone,
Forever gone,
From my most private place.
They did it for no reason!
They did it out of myth;
They did it out of superstition.
And even worse than this,
There was no doubt in their decision:
A forgone conclusion was my circumcision.
Simply to conform and be familiar,
They gave my body a revision
In my most private place.
There are things that I can do
To make what I have better;
There are things that I can do
To take what's left and make repairs.
There are things that I can do;
I do them. I do them.
I try to restore what was taken from me.
But I can never really quite replace
The way that my body was born to be
In my most private place.
Patrick Julius is an undergraduate Dean's Scholar studying cognitive science
at the University of Michigan. He is the founder and President of the University
of Michigan chapter of the Secular Student Alliance, as well as the author of
"Special Relativity from the Ground Up," 2005. He was circumcised as
an infant at his parents' request, and now feels harmed, violated, and
incomplete because of this. He is currently exploring methods of foreskin
restoration, yet always with the knowledge that a restored foreskin is never
quite as good as a natural foreskin.
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