Misandry
I’ve known too many men
who are only brave about the wrong things
and whose swarm of tiny silences over dinner
cram their way down my throat
and fill me up
so that by dessert,
I can push away my untouched plate
and say
I’m full.
So I guess what I mean to tell these men is
Thank you. Now my bikini body will blow your dick off.
If only I could scrape up some gratitude
for the little things,
I could journal my way to equanimity,
which is basically equality if you squint
at the right dude’s op-ed.
Yes, if only I were grateful-as-an-aesthetic.
(Because doesn’t everything look fab in that font?)
If only I could gaze into their cocoon eyes and respond with grace—
“choose joy”—
if only, like they do,
I believed that the important part of benign misogyny
was the word
benign.
If only I were mad in the right register.
Because not all men
can hear the shrieking over the constant dog whistles.
And that’s my bad, really.
There are always problems if you’re looking for them, silly.
Comparison. The thief. All that.
The plan
Some nights the plan is just to come home
and gulp cold wine
on an empty stomach;
to let the monuments mean what they mean,
let the tape run out and flick its tail in the player;
to walk away and realize that you didn’t implode,
you didn’t even die,
you didn’t even fall over once on the damp sidewalk,
licked by wet leaves and ignored
by passersby who don’t mourn in your language.
No.
You wept quietly walking through the streets,
blurring the Christmas lights, the Beaux-Arts streetlamps,
and pressed the web of your hand to your nose
like an adult.
Like someone who understood that maybe
the real tragedy
is the bittersweet way that life does indeed go on.