There's that word
for girls like me:
the ones who
didn't see the point
of princesses.

The active ones who
run and jump and slide
and can't be bothered
to stand around the
playground sidelines,
whispering and trading
in spots of character assassination
or information.

"Tomboys" they call
those girls
and maybe later
"butch" or
"masculine of center."

I notice how
there's never
"feminine of center."

But really,
I've always felt impatient with that word
"Tomboys."

Why should a girl who wore
dangling earrings
but liked the things they label
"boys things"
want a word that suggests she's
something other than what she's not?
An aspirational boy?

A girl who grew up into
a closeted girl
with short hair, no make-up and a love of
jewelry.

Whose first girlfriend post-coming out,
took one look and said "But you're a femme!"

Please, please, understand.
In my heart I am a pirate king,
of the eighteenth-century variety:
big sword, big earrings, big weapons.

On the threshold of middle age,
somewhere on the spectrum of gender,
What word describes me?

She was not fragile like a flower;
She was fragile like a bomb.

she ties her ******* thick knot so he can’t **** on it.
she bites the inside of her cheek until she tastes rust, until he finishes and collapses in a post-****** nap.
she is forced to rise after her body’s beating, juggle his child, do the dishes, start boiling the water, prepare his dinner, crack open a beer, unscrew the anti-freeze and pour just enough all with one hand and all before he wakes.
he tells her to sweep the floor but the dust pads her footsteps so she doesn’t wake him and she’s happiest when he’s asleep.
he’s happiest when he has something to complain about, something to force himself into, some cavity to cram in the name of pleasure.  

women are wild horses grazing in forgotten fields, unrequited and unchained beauty admired only by the sun.
women are the lone wolves, leading from behind.
women are the taste of freedom ****** out by a man with hands around her neck and hot breath in her ear asking if she likes it, asking if she wants it harder.
women are the smell of iron and sticky fingerprints, painting red-black odes into cotton canvases, where society can’t stipple or staunch the flow of freedom.
women are mothers before birth to unruly grab-me-a-beer-babe men tossing ***** clothes to a fresh mopped floor and telling her the place is a pit.
women are anger buried beneath flesh, a bubbling riot up and out of their mouths in the form of what they call crazy and what we call just plain tired.

she hands him his beer, smiles as she adjusts the baby.
here, she says, you deserved it.
she tastes those words, the way they weigh heavily on her tongue like stones tossed into a lake to drown.
she tastes those words, the same words he said to her the first time he painted her eye a pretty bruise-blue, pulled her hair like reigns like he actually believed he could control how she built herself.

fail to admit
you were getting sick
stains on your teeth
from cherry red lipstick
dirt in your nails
picking up sticks
to build a house from the ground
you buried your past self in
marks on your skin
purple and blue
bleed from within
so you look vibrant in hue
your insides burn
like cherry red lipstick
but don't get the same
looks or snippets
your insides are ugly
no matter their coat
please fix them first
before you start to gloat

the enchantress is on the hunt tonight—
behind her veil hides a porcelain doll's face.
when you smell the fragrance of dreams and death,
you know she is coming.

be wary, you are doomed:
take her spell,
be dizzy in her love like moonlight
let her song deafen you
let her magic have you dumbfounded
let her poison seep into your veins;
"honey, you don't need necromancy to know i'm your fate, your future" she says,
as she brews her poison
to be sipped like wine.

the enchantress is on the hunt tonight
she's out to get you,
there's no way out except in,
into the twisted world of the strange occult queen who always wins.

Feast

Eat me darling
Devour every inch
Feast upon my willing flesh
And soothe my tortured itch

Here's milk for you to quench with
And cream for you to taste
Little nibbles here and there
Don't leave a bit to waste

Tie me to the table
And take of me your fill
Starter, main and dessert of course
Bend me to your will

And when you're full and sated
And can't take one more bite
I'll save all of the leftovers
For a little snack at night

Dressed in black, dark eyes amused
She strolls into a room
With the specialised tread
Of a femme fatale,
Tossing her streaming hair in arrogant joy.
Her perfect body
Contains the calm and unexpected force
Of the sea, shifting in a moment between

Reason and fury.
She graces the men with sure-footed Arabic,
Stark, sibilant, passionate words
Laughing like a poem.
A Moroccan beauty,
Guedra dancing in the sun,
From the desert coloured mosque of Casablanca
Punctured by the worship Of 70,000 songs,
To the unremitting souks of Marrakesh,
Her complexity
Emboldened by the courage
Of poets.

She has a silence in her intellect
Such as few have,
Unusual evidence of a soul
In a world of franchises,
Her past imaginings deeper and wider
Than that of her peers,
Dancing to fast Gharnati rhythms,
Beneath imagined Andulusian sunsets
And glowing skies.
An effervescent scintillating gasp of fervent
Desert air, beating across her limbs
Moving gently towards silence.

Her heavy eyelids, her mouth shut tight.
A stare that could pierce through ribcages, through pumping organs, through spine.
Her lips were stained with an artificial tint, the same warmth of her own blood.
Her every step was guided by a strange beat of dark chocolate-flavored symphony.
She was there, and not there at the same time.

Venus burns like hell's fire.
When she ran out of tears, she turned into ice.
It was the same dark cloud that found a home in her brain.
It was the same garden of cacti that hangs in her hair.
It was the same piece of rock that blocks her throat.
It was the same mess of dead butterflies, trapped in her lungs.
The only difference was that she finally learned how to dance.