april 5th

i find myself, much of the time, reduced to the prospects of a romantic or sexual object, to a veneer shallow enough to scrape off and take and try on, one i did not choose to wear but one that i was measured for long before i came of age—in a dentist’s chair, my spine is parallel to the tv screen fixed to the ceiling, and cartoon character misadventures distract me from the way the old man with the silver tools runs his eyes across the contours of my preteen body. his wife works as the receptionist. they file for divorce and she quits before my next appointment. 

around middle school, at christmas, one of my uncles—my mom’s youngest older brother—told me i should model. i have always been slim but i was slimmer than i had been as a child. i’ve been called exotic for my almond eyes, strong features, amazonian height, and my skin a buff shade that renders my ethnicity unclear. this year at christmas—i’m 23 now—my uncle, a different uncle, my mom’s oldest brother, called me santa’s sexy little helper, or something to that effect. i haven’t worn a short skirt for 3 months since then.

i counted three people at the last party i went to who were interested in me. two were women and one was a (presumably) bisexual man. the first woman was short and unassuming except for her incredible haircut, and when she talked a certain valley accent disguised an intellectualism that i’m sure she has learned, in her life, to downplay. the second woman was visiting from new york; she was my type, but her reputation for a series of nasty situationships with other dykes from my community preceded her. i had the sense (was it sense?) to flirt back but she left the next morning. the third, the boy, planted his feet in front of the karaoke machine most of the night, and after our first conversation—he talked with his eyes and an unserious, sideways sort of mouth—he made for me in crowds, kept pushing his way closer, like he had permission to. does a boy need permission to stand next to me at a party? maybe not, but i wouldn’t have granted it. i’ve thought about hooking up with him just to make sure i’m gay, but i couldn’t keep the secret if i did, and i’d be endlessly humiliated to tell anyone i did.

sometimes people do a sort of double take with me that i think celebrities have to get used to—who are you, do i know you? they enter me into their catalog of people and i am less easily forgotten than the waitress, whose face is more simple. 

i am an interesting person. i can say that without a preface of “i think,” because i can do whatever i want. “i think i am an interesting person”—it doesn’t have the same power behind it. i have just as much authority as anyone else over a statement like that, so i need not wait for some troubadour to tell me so. 

if i could have no body, i would. if i could have no face and no features and get away with it, i would. if i could submit myself to anonymity and abandon the social currency afforded to me by my veneer, i would. i chopped off all my hair and i was still beautiful. i chopped up both my wrists and i was tragically beautiful. i wore bags instead of clothes and i was effortlessly beautiful. if i didn’t speak at all i would have a beautiful mystique. if i burned myself alive my mother would sing a beautiful song for me. and would i be so ungrateful? would i be a poor little thing? if i climbed everest i would be so small at the top of the world, and the mountains would be beautiful, not me anymore. 

if i pluck out my eyelashes and gouge out my eyes, if the boy doesn’t want me at the party, if i have no disguise, then i am not worth writing about. so you don’t write about me anymore.

you will honor many girls between your private pages, then someday you might cast us out to sea in little green glass bottles. those bottles would crash into rocks and shatter on the shore of another coast, and the dissipated particles of the poems you made us into would join all the grains of sand on the sea floor. but i think you’d rather keep us for yourself. 

when you write my name you do not know me. you will not know me, because you gave away the right to. i desire that knowing and i will find someone who can deliver, even if it’s not you. i do not know you. when the tide comes in, i am breathing in an even rhythm. and it does not swallow me.