I know
You care about me
10 more people do
Yet I can't get rid
Of this feeling
Of doom

I know
I have you
10 more people too
Yet I can't find a person
To talk to
late at night

I went to a presentation last week, the topic, “We Are Losing Our Young Men.”

The speaker talked about how boys these days are growing up without the thirst for first place, they're becoming complacent with second, that they're now crying in baseball. That men today are just not what they used to be.

I almost raised my hand, almost asked about today's young women, where they are, what type of state are they in, how do they compare to my mother's generation, hell even his mother’s generation.

I almost raised my hand, but didn't, I realized I didn’t care what he had to say. I got caught up in a film-reel of Disney classics and Mother Goose picture books read over a soundtrack of, “What do you want to be when you grow up? What do you want to be when you grown up?” stuck skipping.

I thought about the first things we teach young girls, what they dream about before going to bed, the role models we give them. We tell them they can all be princesses and to dream of fairy godmothers. We give them Cinderella, tell them there's no hardship a rich husband can't solve. We give them Belle-Beast relationships, and we fail to mention that if a man is an animal, do not kiss him harder or love him longer, you leave and don’t go back no matter how much he says he’s changed. We show them Snow White, teach them men will only love them for their beauty, teach them women will hate them for it. We give them Ariel, encourage them to give up their passions and talents and family to the first guy that promises them love. We give them Prince Charming rescues, kisses that awake them from eternal sleep. We do not tell them when they should become wary of slick mouths with a penchant for vulnerable women. I guess they're meant to figure it out on their own.
And we wonder why society is obsessed with the Kardashians.

The film reel stopped. I wanted to raise my hand then, wanted to give this pompous speaker my own two cents and tell him I’m not totally buying this whole “earnest, honest, father like figure” who wants us to “seize our potential” act. His talk has been aimed at the fraternity men that paid him to be here.
He’s smart.
I want to raise my hand and address my fellow “modern women,” but when I turned there were only six females in attendance. So that’s why the joke about his wife got such a poor response.

Had they been there I would have stood on my chair and told them this- One day we’ll be mothers, raising little girls of our own. Throw away your fairy tales and grab yourself a cookbook. Sit down at the edge of the bed and open to the dog-eared page. Tell them, “yes, you are made of sugar and all things nice, but you have this inside of you,” and point her to the bay leaves. Tell her how she has traveled from Russia to India to France. Give her black mustard, perfume made with caraway. Teach her the history of chicory, its medicine, its bitterness. Give her licorice. Give her tarragon. Show the vanilla that runs through her veins, the lavender. Teach her wasabi and her ability to make men weak from her strength. Paint her lips red in celebration of cayenne. Make her a *** of puttanesca, have her taste the oregano, the parsley. Tell her about the recipe for the rub of a pork shoulder that’s been guarded for generations. The black pepper, the white pepper, the cumin. Celebrate her complexity, the bitterness paired with sweet, the anise and marjarom, the cayenne, who cannot help but cry at the overpoweringness of cayenne. Show her the history of nutmeg, her trek through the Sudan, Egypt, Italy. Give her the religions she spread, the languages she introduced to India. Show her the slaves that worked for her discovery, the passages she created. Give her the empires she built, the ones she flattened.

Tear down the castles and open the spice drawer.
Paint her lips cayenne.

you can tell by the way she swings her hips
and pulls your hair
and licks her lips
and whispers in your ear
that she's easy.

you'll know her by the short skirt
and the tight top
and the high heels,
by the butterfly tattoo on her lower back
and the drink in her hand.

if she carries condoms
or takes birth control,
if she can't say no,
if she takes no convincing,
you'll know.

she's the girl at the party who drinks the most
and laughs the loudest.
she's the one you discarded the first night you met her,
when she gave you
the only part of herself that you deemed worthwhile.

you'll figure her out
from the tar trails of mascara,
the untouched meal,
the word "worthless" carved into her thigh like a brand,
marking her flesh as property
to which you are entitled.

pay close attention to her need for validation.
a **** will have the audacity to seek your approval
just because she's been told all her life
that she is  nothing without your love.
she will measure her worth
in units of attractiveness
and desirability
because that is the only system she's ever been taught.

you'll know she's a **** when they find the defendant
not guilty,
and he arrives at the ten-year reunion in a limo.
you'll know she's a **** when she doesn't arrive
at all.

it's easy to spot a ****
in a society that teaches her that her lips are for kisses
and not battle cries,
that her hands are meant to be cradled in yours
and not ****** into the sky,
that her body is your wonderland
and not her home.

it's hard to miss a **** in a culture that paints women as ****** objects
while condemning any expression of female sexuality,
that glorifies the "good girl" who becomes whole
when the right man comes along
and stakes his claim.
the women you ****** in the lifetime before you met your wife
weren't marriage material;
you need a girl who's saved herself for you because
a girl who lets you **** her
crosses the threshold from ****** to ****
in a bizarre coming of age ritual in which your **** is so ******* important
that its temporary entrance to her body
renders her worthless.
you can tell she's a ****
because for her, there is no right answer.

you can find your **** at rallies
and in body-baring photographs,
alive in the anxious triumph
of finding something in herself that she can love,
of digging through a lifetime of rubble
and reclaiming small shards of forgiveness from the dirt.
her self-identified status
rips away your long-established privilege
of dictating who she can be
and defining her worth;
your resent her new autonomy.

you can march beside her,
or you can step aside.
she has stolen back her power.
she was made for revolution.

I love him
I tell myself
I know that
We will be together forever
I don’t believe that
We could be separated
My thoughts tell me that
He’s the love of my life
Sometimes my heart lies and says
I could live an eternity
Without him
Like my friends say
“We’re perfect for each other”
And you can’t tell me
He’s not the one.

Now read from bottom to top.