my gender is a fucking jenny holzer truism

I feel like a girl when I [INSERT ACTION HERE], and when I [VERB], but most of all when I'm [FILL IN THE BLANK]. 

Things pass me by. Everyone's in on a secret and I have no idea where to even start looking. Everyone's beautiful and smells like formaldehyde and I'm the family dog, begging for scraps. 

Pearls before swine, you know the saying, and I feel like a pig stuffed into this dress. It’s pretty though. The way the fabric shimmers in the light, the way the lace fades in and out of existence. I like it, I think.

Do you consider yourself a lonely person?

1. Yes

2. Yes

3. Only on my bad days

4. Yes

Fascinating, fascinating, and the psychologists chatter amongst themselves. Female hysteria, it’s the only option, it’s the only thing that makes sense, you see, only one answer for this, you know how it goes, yes yes under the knife, it’s the only option.

A tumbleweed blows through the theater, and nobody makes a sound as the curtain falls. Fascinating, fascinating, the audience begins to chatter, were you going for ‘caged animal’, or was that just a happy accident? 

I don't know, I guess I've just always liked the idea of spoiled milk, some rotten innocence, and the way the light refracts in the eyes of a thousand girls who I hate. The way the light refracts in the eyes of a thousand girls who I am.

I love the smell of perfume. Not necessarily any specific fragrance, but that underlying, distinctly perfumey smell. It smells warm. It smells like my mom. I guess I can't really talk about my gender without talking about her. She’s all wrapped up in it, inextricably tied, like gum in hair, like soulmates. Being a girl is the delicate sea-foam blue of her bedroom walls, the ornate glass perfume bottles on her dresser, leather and turquoise and dragonflies and spice mixes. 

We have the same heart, you know. They skip beats as one.

Dear Mommy,

I’d ruin my life for another half hour of rest. I’d ask if it’d ever come to that but we both know it already has. I wish you were here, I always do, but I don't want you to see me like this. I never do. I wash my hair before I see you. Like you're a stranger. Like you're someone I have to impress. But my point is, I can't wake up at 6am anymore. I haven't for a while but i haven't had the heart to tell you. I'd hate to break your perception of me. I know he's perfect.

Your Brown Eyed Girl

When I was a little girl, I didn't feel like a little girl

That is to say, I didn't feel little

Or particularly like a girl

That is not to say, I felt particularly anything like a boy

I didn't know how boys felt, I’d never been one

I did feel impossibly old, though

Ancient and wizened and gray