my body lives in a world
where my vagina
needs alterations

my exit sign for life
my entrance to the marrow of me
my heart’s heart
needs maintenance

my vagina
is just another thing
that lives under the hood of
a car
bought by a man who must make sure masculinity
does not
murder him first

do you know that when i met her
i learned how to be a good actress?
did you know when i met her
i realized i’d been performing
my entire life
in a movie
that wasn’t even good?

if a good actress embodies
a complicated humanity
than a shitty one
is a 14 year old me in a push-up bra, wondering if my nipples were too big, and when the padding was replaced with plump permanence i wondered the worthiness of breasts with stretch marks? and was my chest ever my own or a replica of a man’s body with an add-on for their pleasure?

what came first
the ice cream cone
or the penis? 
because i can’t remember licking one without thinking about the other, why did i learn that life couldn’t be sweet if i wasn’t on my knees?

i did not want
to show my girlfriend
that i
was an instruction manual

i did not want to show her
a body that was made
for a man

they say when you
begin to
date women
you start
hating men

well
when you spend 23 years in a body
made for one
23 years where
my hair my hips my heat my hidden hurt, the headlines, the harassment, my head hung next to my hunger, my happy, my heart
all for
what?

happily
ever
after?

it’s not so much hate
as it is
resentment

it’s not so much hate
as it is
relief
.
it’s not so much hate
as it is
reclaiming

it’s not so much hate
as is is
freedom

and it isn’t that i could never love a man
again
it’s just that i’d have to be the one
writing
the manual.