tiny girl

There's a tiny girl at the laundromat with light-up sneakers running up to me and back to her mother, playing leap frog on the floor.

titles of unpublished (or unwritten) blog posts

• of all the tigers I have seen

• only a psychopath

• an actual flannel shirt

• sunflowers: how someone could hate a thing for dying

• astounding: a dialogue

• nyquil

• untimely nostalgia: hope, codependency, & the end of moonbeams

• apple: a dialogue

• grace

• records of a human phonebook

• the patriarchy & victoria's secret

• ting ting & the tilapia

• subliminal (a list of casually violently homophobic things that I have heard, and laughed at nervously)

• reasons for punching

• spring fling foresight

• whale aftermath

• to all the old men who have winked at me, as if expecting some sort of response

• lockdown [pt. 2]

• if you give a mormon coffee

• crying about rocks

gender & giraffes (or, why you shouldn't lie to kids, ever)

My youngest sister Saraiah is four years old.

On father's day, my stepdad took his son to a race track, leaving my mother, sisters, and myself to do whatever we wanted.

"Today's an all girls day," my mom told Saraiah. "It's just you and me and Selah and Shady!"

"Shady is not a girl," Saraiah responded emphatically. "Her's a boy!"

My mother was baffled. "...Why would you say that?"

Saraiah sighed angrily and folded her arms. "Because she is as tall as a giraffe, and giraffes are all boys!"

Our mother reasoned with her about how both boy and girl giraffes have to exist for the species to survive, and how Shady is neither of them, because she is a human, and then she pulled out her anatomy and physiology textbook and explained what made a boy and a girl, because that's who my mother is. Saraiah remained skeptical.

When she told me this happened, I laughed for a while, and then remembered a day about ten months earlier when I had told Saraiah I was a boy -- partly just to mess with her, and partly to see what she would do. She frowned, and said, "You not a girl?

"No."

"But I still a girl."

"Yes, you're still a girl."

Then she moved on and, as I had believed, promptly forgot the whole conversation.

At first we all thought she was just being silly, and would adjust easily to the new information regarding my gender, but throughout the day she would continue to bring it up, making sure. Even for weeks afterward.

We'd be lying in my bed, which she sleeps in since she's scared of the dark, and she'd be playing with my hair and then whisper softly, "Shady?"

"What?"

"You a girl."

"Yes."

Or while we're playing with my dog, "Shady? Calley's a girl. Her's a girl, right?"

"Yeah, she is."

"And you a girl!"

"Yes!"

"And me!"

"Yes!"

After all these conversations one would assume it would be enough.

But one day, we had a small family over for spaghetti and bread.

Half of my family is allergic to gluten: my mother and sisters. Whenever we do get supermarket bread -- a rare delicacy -- only my stepdad, brother, and myself eat it. On this day, one of the other little girls at the table picked up a piece of bread, and Saraiah gasped. "Mom!! Her's is eating wheat!"

"Saraiah it's okay, she's not allergic."

"But her's a girl!!"

I sighed, exasperated. "Saraiah, I'm a girl!"

Saraiah's eyes widened, fork held tightly in hand. She looked around the table, at the two separate pots of noodles, at the plates, at the faces of our guests. You could see how hard she was trying to understand.

I realized then what made it such a problem. If I was four years old, I would definitely categorize my family with my mother and sister on one side, and my dad, brother, and Shady on the other. It made perfect sense as a social binary. We all eat wheat. We're all tall. We all have slightly lower voices, all wear baggy pants and button-down shirts. None of us wear jewelry.


I had been debating whether or not to cut my hair off, but then realized at that moment, watching my sister try desperately to understand the world around her, it would only make Saraiah's life that much harder.

perry

An urban legend.

back

Young girls, middle school girls, matching patriotic bikini tops. They are slouching, nervous, happy, yet to understand the mystical qualities of the shadows under their own shoulder blades of which they cannot see. Skin stretched over spines, told too skinny by their mothers, browning in the sun above the amusement park.

And boys, boys who travel in herds, remove their shirts in herds, swing them over their shoulders in herds, hair short and wet, eyes grinning. Backs straight and tall, lean and proud, some flexing uncomfortably as they approach the backs of girls.

And the backs of children, in the backseat with the windows down. Children running towards the water rides unsupervised, all ribs and spines and healthy hunger, hunger which cannot be filled with the food stamps keeping them alive. Hunger to run and chase and catch and throw, to laugh and cry and shout and scream, to bend backwards, to break bones.

The backs of pennies in a dirty fountain, backwards wishes in the water where a dead bird floats where birds do not belong.

Nine years old and the boys stand up straighter and the girls slouch shorter; the boys get louder, the girls get softer; and you notice the backs of them in the crowds, watch the gradual realization of bodies, the gradual stretching of spines.

From the back of the line, backs of men beneath t shirts, some soft and padded, muscled and slouching under the weight of family backpacks. Backs of girls in crop tops, above the hems of faded jean shorts, soft and dimpled and they know what they're doing though they know not what will be done. Backs of women, seemingly burdened, shirts that hug the skin and bra straps of infinite variety all consistently more interesting colors than the clothes that cover them.

And all of them move to the front of the line, and all of them lean back in their seats, and you are looking at your shoes, looking for something you want to have back, something you left here in middle school. Something in the scaffolding, something in the framework, something in the chipping paint. And you're waiting, searching for words abandoned in this place, words of great significance, and you want them back somehow. You want them back.

Backs of hands lifted in the swirling blue sky, screams tossed backwards and hurled into the air behind, you want them back, you want them back, you want them back.

Backs of nickels, backs of dimes, backs of quarters collected at the bottom as the bird is fished from the surface of the water, floating on its back. The wishes are more expensive these days. You wonder how much they all add up to. You wonder how many came true.

You wonder how many wishes were never asked for, lying on your belly in the grass during the homecoming picnic last year. Unnoticed freckles on your back. Unnoticed beauty on the undersides of leaves dancing above you, everything backwards, everything wrong, everything alive and holy.

And you want that wish back like the bird wants its life back.

Everything alive and holy.

unholy underwear

When I was maybe eight years old, I discovered slips.

I call it a discovery because it happened entirely on my own. I noticed these off-white silk skirts my mother and sister wore under their church dresses, and asked nothing about them. But when I found one in the laundry room, I figured I should wear it.

Because that's what people do, right? They wear slips under their church dresses.

I had no hint of understanding as to the reason and function behind slips, and I wasn't about to ask. I just slipped it on (ha ha) and got my books and went out the door.

As I walked out of the car and through the parking lot outside the church, the slip -- much too big for my frame -- slowly fell from my waist and eventually gathered in a small silk heap around my ankles. I looked down, stepped out of it, and put it in my bag.

My aunt, who had witnessed the whole thing, approached me laughing. I asked blankly what it was she was laughing at, and she stopped and looked at me, puzzled.

"Well--" she tried to explain, "your slip fell off..."

I looked at her.

"And slips -- slips are kind of like underwear. ... So, it was, you know, embarrassing."

I looked at her.

"...Since I could see it." She was beginning to feel cruel.

"Oh," I said, and looked at the undergarment in my bag. I blushed, and laughed, immediately embarrassed. On command. Feeling exactly as I had just been told to feel, as it had been explained to me.

---

Since then I have, of course, learned the function of slips, acquired ones which fit, and worn them appropriately, careful that they are not noticed, simply because of what I was told that one unfortunate evening when I was eight.

Children are only ashamed of what they are told to be ashamed of.

And proudly so.

They hide what they are told to hide, and they do not really think of how the slip must feel to be kept so carefully from public view -- every edge of lace, every small seam. The children are proud of their proper embarrassment, and why shouldn't they be? Undergarments never ask why you are embarrassed of them.

You hold no obligation to them.

Everyone wears underwear, and so everyone knows that everyone else does too. But whenever you see it in public (outside of the purposeful sagging-pants look, or maybe not), you are immediately embarrassed. Because underwear is meant to stay under whatever you wear.

Do you hide what you're ashamed of, or are you ashamed of what you hide?

Is it only the function of the slip -- the purpose of residing under a proper skirt -- that produces embarrassment? Or is it because of embarrassment that the slip must belong under a skirt?

You are proud of this shame. You are. You're supposed to be.

---

People aren't like underwear. That's what I'm saying.

cigarette daydreams, cage the elephant

The milk aisle of a Safeway in Old Town, Fort Collins.

Empty florescent lights and hollow aisles, slightly stained off-white tiles, rows and rows of pristinely packaged food stuffs, neat and clean.

White gallon jugs and white cartons and white bottles, almond and soy and rice and dairy: like a little refrigerated city stretching down the back of the store, and there was no one else and the young girl sat cross-legged on the floor with the city of milk behind her and I sat in front of her.

Something was in love. Something soft and humming like the moths in the lights, something sleepy and beautiful but it wasn't young love between people, it was something more. Something louder than a shadow of wet floor signs and something rarer than the vomit beside them.

The same feeling occurred then that occurred in the music store: the feeling of childhood. Of fragility and safety and calm. Void of responsibility and consequence. And somewhere in the empty superstore a squeaky cart moved down an aisle and somewhere a restroom door closed and the lights hummed down in a softspoken splendor over the milk, the milk, the milk.

And it was love, all of it love, whispering through the music in the car. Familiar and warm, without the repercussions of being held in human hands, it fluttered and flew in and out the car windows, in and out of our lungs. It rejoiced and it told no lies.

And remnants of this love stuck to the kitchen sink, and it was smiling and laughing and holding on to the edges of light and happiness and sound as the music played while music could be found.

An enormous weight removed itself, if only for a moment. A hand of love on your shoulder. Refuge in the milk aisle of a Safeway, holding a ninety-nine-cent bag of off-brand marshmallows, laughing in the afternoon.

Moments of believability. Small glimpses of bliss, shouts from the other end of the void. Caught in the milk net. Tumbling out, laughing. The humming of florescent friendship.

Moments.

Take pictures. Write notes. Sign 'love' before your name.

Pain does not make joy. Objective perspective changes no substance of these theocratic moments held suspended in space and time. We hold a responsibility to touch the beauty of our lives, to hold it where it can be held and to watch it as it leaves us.

I hold no obligation to edit this post.

Poetry makes no difference to the recorded occurrence of love in a Safeway milk aisle.