Jealousy is a wretched condition.
I am jealous of boys who play nurse to their mothers, wait on them hand and foot.
I am jealous of the mothers.
Jealous that authority doesn't always just bridge the generation gap, no, instead it is threaded to her apron.
I am fearful of being that girl in the back of the closet
Behind that old sneaker smell, folded on forgotten sweaters.
The only thing worse than Jealousy is Longing.
It is the infant gnawing on raw nipples, savage, unapologetic.
It is as viral as hunger, as blinding as pain, that drive is too demanding!
I long for myself.
For a braver woman, a woman of no nonsense.
A woman who makes a woman's mistakes. Not a girl's but a woman's.
I COULD say a woman wouldn't have done the things I have done but that wouldn't be true.
She wouldn't have done the things I have done AGAIN or as often.
For women were girls once, even though I am no longer a girl.
I am the dusk and dawn of my era.
I am the rise and set of my age.
Sometimes I long for a man who tries to parallel me.
He is aggressive.
As succulent as the after pain of a neck bite.
All teeth. Gentle.
He is a MAN, muscular, feral, predatory.
Protective. Interested.
His lips are no longer a myth, they are a tradition.
This man knows what I mean when I say awesome.
And AWEsome.
He knows he is the difference and I am the tone.
Then I stop dreaming.
I stop longing.
I put on my pants, apply some eyeliner and get ready to go to work.
I go back to train fares and stations, dirty break rooms, dreading my sister's return.
I go back to blocking out the white bred radio, humming unfinished songs, watching time tick.
I try to forget that this space, this time, my "home" is a library.
I try to forget that I am borrowing here.
That there is a fine and I already pay a lot of prices.
But most importantly I try to forget the longing.
That jealousy is its sister.
I try to forget that I long for HE who is shelter and passion.
And I try to remember to be all TEETH.
