poem: girl / woman

I was in love with a boy — and I felt the great
aching crashing loneliness inside him. come and envelope me at
three a.m. on the couch. ask me about
the books I haven’t read, the panama canal and how I
wanted to throw myself off it. epiphany: you will be sad anywhere because you will be
yourself anywhere. try and get better. life has no meaning because we
suffer? what if — and stay with me here — the suffering is the
meaning. I did not fully come to terms with being a girl until I realized my old
threat against myself — you could have never stormed
the beaches at normandy! you can’t even get out of bed! you can’t even
cut yourself! can’t even get into a psychiatric ward! what kind of
depressed person are you, even failing at
suicide. — was a false equivalency. I would never have had to storm the beaches
at normandy because I am a woman. however I would be able, I think,
to wait at home. to stand behind glass and wait. I am a woman I am good
at waiting. and all my ideas of masculinity are ideas; the lists in my journal of characters I identified with, helmet and fucking pierre from war and peace; and the icons of skinny
attractive boys with black hair whom I wanted to fuck
and also wanted to become. so much easier. do you get it? a false equivalency. sounds
stupid but it was a breakthrough. not that this
is a real problem. but then I was also suicidal for two years and did not think it was
a real problem either. I had a nightmare I was getting a double-
mastectomy and woke up but they were only deflating my lungs and pulling them out
like useless deflated capital, whispering transhumanism! you are much
much much better! than you were before! you useless fucks I promise you will never
take me, or my children. and I fell in love with a man and he picked me in his arms
like a flower and I was persephone, I died but found
my sudden worth. he kissed me in the rain and the light was pink. my heart my beating
heart is inside my uterus I promise you none of this is irony. I fell
in love with a man.