Stupid white girl.
We are not allowed to do anything.
We're prim and proper, white girls.
We are not allowed to fight back.
Put us in our place, white girls.
We are not allowed real work.
We still want our twenty three cents back.

The child of fair skin and blue eyes.
But with all my female privilege,
Came a nasty stamp on my body.
Like a watermark.
FEMALE.
I have heard that when a woman looks in the mirror, she sees a woman.
But when a man looks in the mirror, he sees a human.

Even with that watermark, our pale skin is used as a canvas.
And everyone else has been handed the tools to color in our curves.
Covering us in blue and black and purple and red.
Redrawing our minds so they cannot process the discrimination,
Painting over our tears so our feelings can be buried,
Manufacturing open legs when you want them,
Closed when you don't.
Erasing the lips we use to speak out,
Erasing the eyes we use to see all of this.

You think just because you held the brush,
Just because you created this monstrosity of a "masterpiece"
You get to claim ownership of this piece of artwork
That you blatantly disregard
Is my BODY.

The "fe" you tack onto "male"
Does not stand for Free Entry.
The "wo" you tack onto "man"
Does not stand for Wipe Out.

Women are barely able hold a pencil.
I was lucky to hold one long enough to draw myself
A conscience, a backbone, legs to stand on, and a mind.
We were only taught how to use the back end of that pencil
To erase our mouth and keep the secrets.
But these days the secrets are keeping themselves.

I will not be put in a glass case
You will not charge admission
To have people come and analyze me.
Buy me.
Give me value.
Categorize me.
Preserve me the way you created.

You are no artists.
You are vandals.

so i get this idea sometimes
that you enjoy being coy
when it comes to me
to conjure momentary spectacle
& make me wonder
if you paint catharsis
on the doors of a home
you've never lived in
as a memory of our first night together
because i do, i remember you
beaming white on blue
speaking softer than any storm
i ever knew, i often think that maybe
you live that night in your mind
when your pillow is cold
& you can't sleep, it makes me wonder
if you do as i do, and rewrite three years fictionally beginning with a kiss somewhere
maybe a balcony or a quiet car
on the sand or in a sunlit grove close to your home but always a familiar scar on the maps we know we know by heart
i wonder if sometimes
the idea of me loving you is too real
and if it teems under your tongue
to stay observant but distantly intrigued
if by this distance you think it safe
to get a dog and pass time
on the couch with a journal & some wine
what i really wanna know is if your fingernails ever wish to have my skin under them
or if they would boast
about winning a war with my headboard
i wonder if you can imagine me
meeting your parents in your apartment & shaking your fathers hand
as a first of many calloused palm readings
and if you know that i trembled before them
how insignificant i had felt
to not know their daughter
in the way i had envisioned
how i picture such poignant moments
so tangibly sharp that sometimes
i replace  my memories with little stories
i tell myself that i can't count on two hands
the number of times i've seen you
& that i don't feel like a crater
when i recollect our collisions
i want to know if you still find madness
in the words that have always been about you
i wanna know if your imagination of me
looks more like an anniversary or an obituary

i spent too many ripe summer evenings
chain smoking on my rooftop
all alone, thinking of just you
and how you hate my cigarettes

i still like you but you forgot me

I guess I don't really know how to tell
you that I am truly capable of
loving you entirely
I'm a girl who loves people
and I want to love your person
and I've shown you things I've written
and no one else has seen the things I've written

I really can love you
all of you, even the dark parts
because I want to put your dark parts into my
heart and keep them away from you
so that you can feel a little better
all in all, I guess what I am saying is
that I'm a girl who loves people
and I want to love your person

I find myself wondering what my mother
expected to get when she
decided to have a second child.
There were undoubtedly
some preconceived notions
of what her daughter would be like.
I’m sure she pictured a graceful beauty
with an attractive smile and a gentle demeanor—
deep, dark brown hair like her own.

Sorry, Mom.

You had to settle for
a uncouth ball of tangled ambition,
the stubborn, imaginative smart ***
you never knew you could want—
who will overthink this enough
to form it into words.

At least you can say
you got the hair right.

I've got freckles & ****
and you've got those
******* headphones
but you took them
out for me
and I like you
because of that