I.
I am a woman who for the most part is anything but
There is nothing I love more than the color pink
and how a dress looks on my body
Except my crippled feet could never fit into stilettos
When I was 11 my friends wanted to paint their nails at a birthday party
When I tried to do my right ones it looked sloppier than a painting by
a newborn kitten
And my left hand wouldn’t even open enough to see my nails
When I was 12 years old my PE teacher told our class that all the girls needed to put
their hair up into pigs or ponies
Everyone stared at me in my gym shorts glory
When I walked out with hair like a boys a couple months later
Because I could not put my hair up like the other girls
Learning my hand at rubber bands was a ritual I was not privileged to
As much as I wanted to be
And I didn’t want to cause a hassle
And the thing was I liked my manish hair
It was strong and like I was free soloing a mountain that only I knew
And wasn’t that a marvel to behold
And just that year I realized the reason I didn’t want to talk about
boys at sleepovers
II.
I’m older now and I’ve grown into a woman
And when I was 15 I got into my first fight with a stranger on the internet
It’s about abortion which is one of the most controversial things to have
your first internet fight about
But I’m speaking louder than I should
And he calls me a bitch
And that’s the first time I’m called something like that
And not the last
Because I am loud, I am passionate, and I am impulsive
I’m emotional which is something a woman should be
Except I’ve never done it in the way that men like
I’m the loudest one in my history class
I’m writing up essays on instagram stories
I’m the girl that would earn SJW as a high school superlative
I’m what you might call a future mother of a son of a bitch
III.
I’ve always been emotional which is probably the most important
Of the previous four traits
I’m emotional because I cry at the end of romantic comedies
I’m emotional because I get angry when I hit my funny bone or
can’t get my makeup just right
I’m emotional because I get so excited when I see a friend
after just a week of not seeing them
Except the reason that I’m emotional to men
I am angry indigenous women are missing
I am angry black woman are more likely to die in childbirth
I am angry that 1 in 5 women will be sexually assaulted in their life time
And the other reason I am emotional to men
Is because as a woman I’m supposed to be civil with everyone
I’m supposed to be civil with people who want me dead
And who’d likely of lobotomized me if I was around 50 years ago
Little boys who drew swastikas on my hell of a dyke locker in 7th grade
And men who cat called my friends on the beach for
simply existing as just out of our preteens
I refuse to be kind to men who I wouldn’t trust to hold my drink
I refuse it and so I am cruel
IV.
So this womanhood I craved so badly when I was a child
Isn’t what it was cracked up to be
And it’s like being told Santa Clause isn’t real
And I fall into it
Like children’s building blocks held together with super glue
I became so skinny my sophomore year for a reason
Still nevertheless
I am not a woman because I cannot put my hair up on my own
I am not a woman because I don’t treat men like my mortal gods
I’m a dyke looking thing in a pink skirt
With a funky little limp
Lily Gerhard is a junior in OCSA’s creative writing conservatory. She is passionate about disability activism, writing novels, and Dungeons & Dragons. Her work is published in a few online magazines and hopes to publish an entire book of her very own someday. You can find her microwaving food from Trader Joe’s, trying to be a good parent to her dogs Flower and Poe, and putting her hair up into pigtails. Her favorite genre is space operas and her favorite dinosaur is a Brachiosaurus.