You Watch Me Wishing I Were Twice as Good

You begged me to close my legs tried to make me a lady in my skirted youth, but I was hanging from the monkey bars by scraped-up knees, my skirt a billowed sail. Tiny underwear and belly exposed, cradled in the clamor of self-amused laughter— a joyous child. Even after the belt, your thick, black palm, paddle hairbrushes, that whittled wooden cane, voice so loud windowpanes were tambourines, still— I am this way: vocal, unafraid.

In the airport security line, two uniformed women pat-down my girlfriend, her breasts bound tight to ease button-down shirts onto her form. I'm still not comfortable one says, and they escort my partner to a backroom for further inspection. I hear my own detached yelling, anger emerging from a bodily history of you do not belong, I am the woman in a public meltdown, surrounded by anonymous passengers. This is bullshit. Nearby my father stands like a column with a single index finger pressed against pursed lips, attempts to ease a non-existent orchestra into decrescendo. He folds his hands at his waist, the same way he behaved to avoid his father's belt or his mother's backhand. I'm still a scene, tears streak my cheeks; my father has already left his body.