Bleeding Hearts

Supernovas/black holes/ my mother

Sometimes, I forget my place as a woman. Sometimes, I forget that I am not allowed to be human like they are.

They are boys. Of course, they're boys. I start to think that I am being over analytical, but then I recall who had called me that - it had been a man. He hadn't necessarily been wrong, he'd just put it out so that words float in my mouth now every time before I speak them out loud, afraid of the splash they can make. I suddenly realize - It isn't heterosexuality what I've been so vehemently against my entire life, it's the idea that a man loving you could simultaneously mean you not being equal to him. I had seen it all my life - in the women who had surrounded me, who had surrender to some men they couldn't win against, who had lost wars against men whose loudness always meant them being right.

Sometimes, I wish I was a boy. I wish I could wake up one day, in a different body - one that the world doesn't  shame for existing. In a different skin - which will always be masculine, which will have the power to stretch over the words it doesn't like. With rugged hands that rung claps on people's backs, with eyes that could make someone turn their head to the ground. With the type of body people would be afraid of, with the type of mentality people would be dominated by. Everything I'd do then, wouldn't just be valid - it would be amazing. Because I'd be a boy, I would fly.

There are two boys I talk to on the group call. I am drunk on life itself, after all - it's after midnight.  But unlike those boys, I have to be wary of the things I say - I do not want to wake up in the morning and be reminded that my womanhood is shameful because I accidentally talked about intercourse, or sexuality or something smart. I call them friends, but this causes me more harm than good - because now not only do they have the power to make me feel lesser than I am, it has been made legitimate by the title I have given them - I have placed the crowns on their heads gently, and told them they were kings - they have often mistaken my kindness for their own power. I wish I had more female friends, because how will I ever teach these boys that while they are my kings, I am also their queen.

I can never fall in love with a boy because of this reason and this alone - not necessarily because I have no attraction towards them, but because they that will allow them a power I am not willing to give them - my mother has taught me better. I look at the crinkles around my mother's eyes sometimes, and wonder what secrets she hides in those depths - she is a poet, she has learned to drown under until she reaches the seabed and picks up the jewels and mask herself in their glory - she can only make art when she is in the shadows.  She has taught me the exact opposite - to go out into the light, to burn with the intensity of the rays and to give them a show they won't ever forget.

Scratch that.

She has taught me to be the very sun, itself. To be the biggest star in the solar system, to let other people revolve around me and let my light engulf them with slippery supernovas. But sometimes black holes swallow these same stars I have made with my light, and sometimes I am that black hole myself.