when i was 7 i had a 4×4 woven blanket,
i’d always had it.
baby pink and blue and yellow and green
it disappeared into the washer one day
when i was 17 i found my blanket
folded on a pile of other old things
i thought were gone forever
i carried it into my first dorm room
into my second dorm room
and my third
on a trip to austin, texas
to every room i made mine
i’m working on loving it
to the last string
when i turned 17 my mother gave me a marble topped dresser
wobbling on her feet at my bedroom door
she asked if my birthday went well
six months later i realized the bottom panel was a secret drawer
In legitimizing the smallness of women. In normalizing their role as a man’s plaything. In belittling them in his dismissal of Hillary Clinton as a “nasty woman”. Donald Trump pushed me into a hole. He pushed every woman into a place where going into work and being called “Girl”, and “Love”, and “Sweetheart” is a depth she cannot emerge from. In supporting him you support an America where I am nothing more than a stranger’s “Honey”. I am something someone can touch while she makes coffee. Someone who can change her hair in an attempt to shake a bit of her mundane life and have men respond with “I liked it better dark” or, infinitely worse, “Your new hair is sexy. It works for me.” When I woke up November 9th at 1:40 a.m. and whispered to my boyfriend “what’s happening” and he replied “mostly the same” and I understood in my sobering-up, just-awake brain what that meant, I didn’t know how to respond. I, immediately, felt fully awake without really being alert. At 2:15 I left for a walk. My boyfriend asked if I should go. He asked me to stay safe. I told him that was impossible (subtext: duh) but I needed this so please just let me go. On that walk I cried and screamed and chain smoked Camel Crushes because the world I had known shifted at its very core. And if you respond to these feelings with a “but that is how it is”, “this attitude towards women does not begin and end with Donald Trump” fuck you. FUCK YOU. His election makes these attitudes our country’s policy. In the way that electing him means that our country is fine with deporting immigrants and barring immigrants and pushing even further into the margins the marginalized it makes this attitude what. we. believe. to. be. True.
my life will be lived in a hot pan
sauteed over fire with shallots and lime
defined by flashing silver and late nights
crashing into cotton long after my love
floating on juniper-y liquors
and lavender, coriander brews
with a flick, twist of skinny wrists
until insomnia means nothing
and tomorrow comes
via (never pause)
when i was 15 i painted my room except the edges
my mother told me not to, said she was good at it, she would
when i was 20 my mother painted my old room a new color for my brother
all the way from the ceiling to the floor
sometime after my 13th birthday but
before my 14th
i rode double on a bike to my town’s best park
and sucked my first dick in the dark under a tree
we weren’t good at communicating yet so
his cum fell in my hair and mouth
i spit it out
and cried
my parents never talked to me about sex
they yelled at me for being alone with a boy
they grounded me for hiding him in my garage
or bedroom or attic or basement
sometime after my 15th birthday but
before my 16th
i lay double under a blanket on my front porch’s bench
and decided to stop pretending to fuck
we knew by then how to communicate but not like this so
he fumbled and squirmed and gave up
dry humped
and i cried
my friends and i always talked about sex
we assumed i’d be the first to have it
i told them about all my escapades in my garage
or bedroom or attic or basement
sometime after my 17th birthday but
before my 18th
i waited alone on my boyfriend’s bed
and he walked to get condoms
we had done everything but this so
it was awkward and a little painful
i bled
and didn’t cry
quiet intimacy 