today is my girlhood’s anniversary. I’ve just made
up the date, my girlhood is a cunning liar. when I
was young, girlhood was the loneliest lamppost, a
thing I looked at when I walked home alone at
night. on the street after everyone fell asleep, I
regarded it. I opened my eyes and let it envelop me
in its bruised history.
even if you drowned in girlhood, you wouldn’t be
alone. not with all that water, not with all those
girls calling your name. wouldn’t it be nice if you
could keep somebody company in the dark like
that? my girlhood could. and then it couldn’t.
when we were just kids, you were a beautiful boy
and I was just a girl. if I have one regret, it’s not
telling you this simple fact: [ ], you were
beautiful. you made living look like a uniform you
could wear correctly. You did the body, your body,
every body, justice.
I felt like the suit of my skin wasn’t tailored right,
looked disproportionate to my self. I envied you. I
loved you obtusely, at an angle I couldn’t articulate
pretty. I failed in my skin. But you, you liked me.
My girlhood misunderstood you. It understood me
even less.
when I drive the old roads we grew up in, I like
to touch the past. I want to reach in and feel its
familiar grooves. The cursive pitch of Diablo, the
brooding stretch of Sycamore Valley. The fence
that kept your funny dog out of your best friend’s
yard. The oak tree that no longer exists, the sole
witness to our first kiss.
maybe grief is my girlhood’s hometown. No, my
hometown is my girlhood’s grief. The difference is
negligible, my body can’t tell past from passed. I
can’t get home without you anyways.
Girlhood is a synonym for death.
Girlhood is a synonym for life.
if I figure out which one it is, would it bring you
back? Maybe the past is my girlhood, my body a
gender most fluent in lack. My throat a symphony
most fluent in silence. My body felt wrong, but
yours always looked right.
right like the sun at high noon, right like your ankle
dancing across a mist-bled field, the August
morning too slow to catch it. Right like a runaway
bride. Right like rain, all that rain. If I find the right
metaphor, can I still go back and be a girl for you?
if girlhood is a surface, I sought to glean it and
collect its sweat for pearls. Shiny and new, I liked
being a girl for you. [ ], I still do.
the bones of your wrist, your neck and your thigh
belong to girls. What’s cleaved off a body belongs
to a girl. I don’t make the rules. Girlhood collapses
logic. Your death collapsed time.
I’m older now. I use a name you never called me.
I’m an age we never talked about. I didn’t plan my
girlhood this far ahead. [ ], can you hear me?
when I look back, grief was my girlhood. That’s
why I’ll always be a girl, because I’m still grieving.
all the girls I could have been and never was.
And yet, reflected in the mirror of a church
bathroom in Oakland, the coldest Sunday of
summer, hidden beneath a borrowed black suit, not
fully unrecognizable, the one I was when I was with
you.
You made me feel like a girl.
I don’t know how to let you go.
