by Kristen McCollum
“You are a woman with a man inside watching a woman. You are your own voyeur.”
Margaret Atwood, The Robber Bride
Do you know what it feels like
to be hungry for your own body?
To stand in front of the mirror day by day seeing
long hair the color of butter
cups under chins and sugar cookies that you aren’t allowed to eat,
even though you chopped it all off. Thighs so good you just want to take a bite.
Hairless arms remind you of kindergarten,
days with peanut butter sandwiches, crust cut off by mothers who hadn’t left yet;
marriages by swingset (the kind that don’t have a 50 percent chance of divorce
because we’re young and in love and that first love follows us till death do us part).
Are you trying to find that in me?
To walk down the street
in a high school homecoming t-shirt that might as well be lingerie, to hear them leer
you should smile more, over here, princess, sugar tits, baby,
look at the ass on her, sexy, sweetie, the things I i would do to you, but you won’t let me,
slut.
They don’t know that we let them everyday.
We’ve been afraid to admit this, an utterance to empty air that can bring forth
the death of womanhood, taping the glass ceiling back together-
but in a way it makes us feel pretty.
Or maybe wanted is a better word, if there is one. At the end of the day,
we have no reason to fear being alone, even if our only company
is a vacant vessel- because being a body is better than being nothing at all.
Long legs make for a good life.
But if I let you touch me, do you promise to feel me?
To be a woman is to be a bitch tied in the front yard of your own home for everyone to see.
Such a pretty girl.
Tell your friends that she can fetch, roll over, and even pretend to come! Put down
when she bites.
To be a woman is to be a mirror,
to be everything and nothing at all, all of the good and the bad, the beautiful and the ugly,
the paper rings and the mother leaving you on the playground, and I
am a woman.
Have you found yourself in me?