some fragments of experimenting:

sometimes I wonder what it would be like to be a woman, the shape, the soft layers of trouble, the slip into night, the bar bathroom duck-out late shift uncertain step into mist, to slick my lips with stolen teenage paint, to twirl my hair between my fingers as I lean against a wall pretending my telephone isn’t buzzing my father’s name in my pocket because something as outmoded as a father dissipates like steam when older boys are biting their lips at each other or maybe at me

I want to have a dad and then leave him to have a daddy and then leave him for a better one I want to know what it’s like to hate the patriarchy from the outside not this constant picking out of sick from inside me 

and I want to know what it’s like to ride a motorbike with slim hips

I want to balance on my toes like knives I want to stride out onto the dance floor like a goddess like Kali I want to set the club on fire with my lips

it’s not so much that I want to leave myself behind but that I know my body can do more than I have been given the instructions for 

I am taking pieces from an Ikea bedroom set and rearranging them, trial by error, except I mean myself, myself, the woman who blossoms out of me in late-night text messages and into your arms.