Attempts at Feminism: A Series of Missteps

(Trigger warning: sexual assault)

Attempts at Feminism: A Series of Missteps

When the hair stylist is washing my hair, she asks me if the proposed cut has been approved

by my man. 

I ask "what" so many times, she changes her wording.

"Do you have a man, or are you trying to get one?" she asks.

"Woman," I say, quietly, inaudible under the running water.

"What?" she asks.

"Hmmm?" I say.

We fall into silence.

She quietly lathers my hair. 

I tell my boss I am going to the conference based in feminist psychology

because I believe it essential to my understanding of

power, privilege, oppression, social justice, public policy, activism...

and she laughs.

Meanwhile,

I watch the only black woman in the room get told,

"I understood what everyone was saying until you started speaking."

Meanwhile, our white, male boss hides cameras in the ceiling

and no one says a word.

Meanwhile, a client tells me she doesn't want those people around her son --

and I tell my boss I'm gay, so this conflict poses a problem.

She asks me to consider what would happen if the newspaper 

found out the institution has gay employees,

wonders aloud if the institute would support me,

or if somehow

my job could be on the line.

It has taken 7 months

and a new job to poem that.

There is fear

living in those words.

Still.

It's March.

A month when, already,

the smell of rain and

unseasonably warm days leave memories of

fingerprints blossoming purple like crocus around my arm.

My words come slow and

uneasy.  This week, I bite my lip.

It bleeds,

and I can smell him.

March brings a heaviness in my body that is not physical

or spiritual

but is just a thing that lives with me these days

so familiar

I could cradle it

if I loved it enough.

But I don't.

My mother gave my father a collection of every Cosby Show DVD for Christmas.

She said, "I just don't believe the man is guilty,"

told me I was "too sensitive" when I tried to argue,

and countered that I didn't understand because I

"didn't grow up watching the show."

My father then presented four rape alarms he had wrapped as he has

every year since the year I was raped.

My two sisters, mother and I open them under the tree between the

new pajamas and Amazon gift cards,

and I now

have five fucking key chain rape alarms

and an admonishment to "use them,

but don't rely on them and put yourself

in dangerous situations."

We've never had a conversation about what happened,

but when I hold the alarm between my fingers

as I walk to my car at night

I think, this.

This must be

what love feels like.