i see more greys each time my roots grow
and i whisper hello?
i’m not afraid of what they imply
an aging body, a loss of youth
or i am, but also in awe,
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Grief lives in us, always. Sometimes we call it by another name, like anger, fear, or existential dread. But as a rose,by any other name, still smells as sweet, calling grief by a pseudonym won’t change how you feel. It will change how you approach it, tend to it, and integrate it, though. and what about when it’s grief+ [insert additional complicated emotion here]?
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My earliest memory of my life is being in a swimming pool with my dad at the Polynesian hotel at Disney World. I remember the layout of the pool, that I was wearing a yellow life jacket with my hair in pig tails, and I felt like my dad loved me. I was three years old. Fast-forward two years ahead. How times can change.
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It’s in my nature to talk about the things no one wants to talk about, I just usually do it through a metaphor or turn of phrase that could be interpreted in a multitude of ways. In poetry, I can share the deepest, darkest parts of me so freely because the likelihood that you, my dear reader, will fully understand is pretty small. And if you do? Well, congrats! Though that means you’re probably also in the self-harm club, so it’s a bittersweet congratulations.
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What is cheating, exactly? Most people would say that having sex with someone other than your partner is cheating. But, what else? I am polyamorous with two partners, so cheating is a funny thing to me. Not “haha” funny, but more “I think about it a lot” funny. When I say cheating is about breaking agreements, I also mean cheating is about power and consent. There is an explicit—yet unspoken—agreement in monogamy: Don’t have sex with another person. But part of the problem stems from the lack of clarity. In polyamory, cheating is not necessarily about sex with someone else (though it can be!!), it turns into what power you’re trying to use, whose consent are you not getting, and/or what agreements are you breaking.
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As a woman who grew up in the 90s under the curated spell of Hollister, Abercrombie, and Victoria's Secret, I have an almost hyper-awareness of my body through the lens of the male gaze. I can recall several conversations with older men when I was a preteen, imploring that I not become “fat” like their wives. “Don’t become another useless woman who just shops with their husband’s money and takes care of the kids,” they’d say. Yes, seriously.
And of course, at 11 years old, I wanted to be impressive and liked. I didn’t get straight As for nothing, you know? So I took on this lifelong assignment to always be small and self-sufficient, to take what a man says to heart in order to “win” against the other women.
I giggle as I reflect on and write this. Not because any of it is funny, but because. thankfully, somewhere along the way, I realized the old saying is true: Girls rule, boys drool.
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