power pose
in front of the angry men
"we're not scared of you"

but they should be
she spits fire bright
from lips she wears matte dark
she's digging the perfectly manicured claws into the palms of her hand
hands that bring incredible generosity
and incredible pain
depending on how audaciously you approach her

with your alcohol-stenched breath
and a body that takes up space
but contains nothing of substance
aside from liquor of course
an empty, angry vessel of wordy slurs and slurred words

she knows they don't deserve her tears
they should feel grateful to receive even a smirk
an ounce of her attention
in this economy
with the men who untuck their shirts after a long day's work
unaware of what the women have been up to
is priceless

you can't commodify what you can't touch

they are not beds waiting for you
to lay down on
to make your lives easier
while you weigh down upon ours

her silk sheet skin
and the comfort of knowing she will be there at 2pm and 2am

this is her home
this body is an address
it is not your residence
loiterers will be fined
she will be fine

power pose
the power grows
this is your power prose
because mama,
you will be fine

swaying across the hardwood floors
swoon, swoon, swoon
under the moon, moon, moon

your fingers dance across my spine
like piano keys
your hand tapping against my thigh
like a tambourine

a gospel choir singing
in the background of your laughter
sobriety is easy
when you're drunk in love

and you didn't even know you could dance to this

perhaps i should have been gentler, they said
but you don't tell a forest fire how to scorch
what to burn

i was given one clear motive
and you would be given no warning

we are not entitled to what we did not give others
you steal innocence, and i can't buy back time

like a phoenix,
she rises from the ashes of her dollhouse
invaded and destroyed
but painted on the outside
like a perfect little home

we were anything but
and when i was handed a torch of my own,
how dare you meet my eyes with anger
at what you created

you say i'm not what you expected
and certainly not what you wanted

and to you i say,
good.

i want to love you enough
to make the way you look at the world change
the peripheral vision allowing you to see the
panoramic beauty
of a place made better
because you walk in it

you trust me
to touch your skin
and watch you cry
and listen to your truths
and i would hold my stare
if it wasn't so painful to see you like this

what is it like to be like this

i cannot ask you to stop gasping in fear
when you don't recognize me entering a room
i cannot ask you to stop wincing, crying, or thinking
because what happened happened, as you say
but this is not something you can so easily let go

i want only good things to happen to you
and i want to be one of them
i'll never let you go,
even if i can't love you enough to change very much
i'll love you
and sometimes, that is enough

what is that college readmissions essay supposed to tell you?

i was depressed, but you don't acknowledge mental health as anything but a lazy made up excuse to not work as hard as the people whose shoulders i stood on did.

"what have you learned, and how will you apply that as a student at our university?"

how do you define growth?

i'm going back to school, and that's what i want to talk about, but i can't help but focus on why i left. i can hear myself and others, battling the war in our heads called "pragmatics vs empathy".

i can't tell who's losing.
i can only tell who's participating in yuppie culture, i can only draft so many letters to my parents, and the congruence of my academic self and every other version of myself.

what does a gap year mean (to my family)? what about two?

i've had this stand alone identity, and it's cost me a lot.

i miss learning.

there are so many barriers, so much omission.
do i only make one-year commitments out of fear for anything longer?

i'm jumping into a lot of different identities, with their own different paths, but we ultimately come back together as one, as me. it's meiosis. only one of them has to eat or sleep. i could keep working and running forever. parts of me are really and only good at that.

how do i fulfill the expectation of living up to what my parents see?
how do i get recognized for "growth" and how do i identify areas for it?

i'm sorry, dad. this was a really long voicemail. i'll talk to you later.

preface: this isn't cohesive, and it's mostly a side effect of having too much free time while stuck in traffic - lots of thoughts can pop into your half-awake head when you choose to start your 1 hour, 45 minute commute at 5:30 every morning and 6:30 every night.

these are some of those thoughts:

how many car accidents and concussions will it take for me to just move closer to where i work? apparently, more than five.

driving on a california freeway, especially in the rain, is like getting a free ride on the world's most dangerous slip n slide. or like playing roulette and praying you and your precious car you have had since high school don't fall victim to the misfortune of a collision or sink hole or only clear radio station being the one that won't stop playing adele songs that compel you to hit up your ex boyfriend again.

but you're a smart driver who doesn't text on the road or date men from new jersey anymore.

i like to map out new ways to tell my family that i'm actually kind of really gay because they've been having a really hard time accepting that, despite the fact that i've tried to make it as blatantly obvious as i could by dressing like chandler bing from friends, dying my hair rainbow, and listening to more fleetwood mac than any straight girl should.

i have even walked up to my mother and outright asked her, "hey, what's it like having a gay daughter?" (not that it should be any different than having any other kind of daughter), and she said, "i don't have a gay daughter", and i'm like, "oh my god, mom. yes, you do. she's 5'8", looks just like me, and is constantly talking about how gay she is."

a lot of people have given me unwarranted "advice" on how to make myself more appealing for jobs or romance, and i'll mull it over in the car, but not for too long because women aren't empty suggestion boxes just waiting for your input.

if anything, i'm more like the receptionist at the DMV. i'm only listening to you a third of the time, and the other 2/3, i wish you weren't there to bore me with your problems because it's not my fault that you need to pay off a ticket you got for texting your ex boyfriend from jersey.

people in college frequently asked me "what are you?" and i never really knew how to respond because i wasn't clear or pleased about the question's context or purpose. i would half-seriously respond with "i'm a sophomore" or "i'm a capricorn" or "i'm a sociology major who just realized gender isn't binary and taco tuesdays are a real and exciting thing".

i knew that being ethnically ambiguous meant i would be subjected to guessing games, but i thought if people didn't know what you were, you could dodge judgment and racism. but no, i actually just found myself treated like an ice cream flavour people had never heard of or tried before and weren't sure how they felt about it.

and i, myself, had been in this phase of dating exclusively white men for years, and it only recently occurred to me that that was probably because subconsciously i knew: "this is the closest i'll ever be to having white privilege".

then, i started working in schools where almost all the students were black and brown, and for the first time in my life, i saw myself in people around me.

small people, people in progress, with big brown eyes and clenched fists that i would spend months prying open

with love.

enough love to raise a hand,
hold a pencil,
braid my hair on days when it was so frizzy
- "oh my god, miss sangha, let me do it"

up until then, i had never chosen to be brown or queer or a woman. not until my students demanded i learn spanish because i already got the skin tone, now i just need to learn the language. not until my students asked me why the school made them line up boy girl, and one of them started the third line with pride that took me nearly a decade to find myself. not until i stopped letting people label me an angry ***** just because they lacked the vocabulary to say "wow, jaswin, you have really assertive leadership skills and i'm going to respect you and the space you take up and not at all be threatened or bothered by the fact that you have two X chromosomes to the point of harassing you to make my insecure self feel better."

i became someone who got "do it for the kids" tattooed on the left side vein that leads to her heart, someone who chooses her students every day to the extent of being terrified of having her own kid one day because if she can love someone else's child that much, her heart might just burst from locking eyes with someone whose existence she is actually directly responsible for.

clearly, i'm not going to let a little traffic slow down that kind of radical love.

do you remember how we used to complain about the drought
ripped the green from the hills
and put us on watch
for how long our showers could be

i had to find a new place to cry for half an hour
and i had to watch forest fires on the 5 o'clock news all too often

now,
dams are breaking
and we can't stop the mood swings of Mother Nature

can you blame her?

the levee has been breached,
and the uncertainty is eating me alive
and oh,
how this reminds me of you

you set me on fire
and tried to drown me
and i never knew when to expect which
but i could always complain about the one that was happening

the changes in scenery were never what i wanted
i lay awake, hearing the raindrops hitting the roof
and i just don't know what tomorrow, or you, will bring me