I am the girl who comes from young love and loyalty and shameful family secrets and unnamed traumas.
The girl who loves dolls that smell like fruit flavored candy.
Who digs for dinosaur bones in shallow hard hot California backyard dirt.
I am the girl who is not a girl but a box of pampers, a pirate, a steampunk mermaid, a tree, a bride, a daughter made in her mother’s image.
I am the girl with gnawed nails and a biting tongue. The one who wears armor and always draws the suit of swords. Through my crooked teeth I’ve lied to every — single — lover.
I am the barfly, the labor justice activist. The one who bears witness when survivors talk about their sexual assaults. The one who spits gum in the faces of despicable men.
I drink 40 oz bottles of malt liquor and absinthe, smoke American Spirits and fraternize with misogynists and Psilocybin-peddling locksmiths.
I am the girl with the Marlboro Miles, with the eyes rolling in the back of her head at her boss’s self-aggrandizement and bad choices.
I am the spider rescuer. I am the rat MILF. I am pair-bonded with a cockatiel.
I am the girl that became the woman that stopped time. That ate wonder and drank woe. That saw my own heart shattered and mended a thousand times. The one who is constant, the nuisance and the comfort.
I am the girl with a billion moments
bleeding into one precious life.