young, pretty & unattached

asked constantly by those older than her,

“are you seeing anybody?”

“how’s your love life these days?”

she endures the nonsense that this country

founded on racism, sexism, homophobia,

machismo & violence

forces upon her

every day that she isn’t desiring that fucking

white picket fence.

 

how many times after puberty rears its head

does she have to hear the word

“children?”

how many grandmothers talk about wanting

“grandchildren” around her,

as if her hopes and dreams should all end up in

fucking suburbia,

nursing one rug-rat from each breast &

wishing that she never listened to any of them?

 

this is the age of her rising above,

rising above all this conventional, traditional shit &

yet she still hears her friends rattle on

about the things that they have been told to want,

as if the 1950’s never ended---

she goes to the grocery store &

she sees the fronts of all the magazines

with those airbrushed fake whores

plastered there to remind her of an image that she

is supposed to want all her goddamned life &

yet,

she is strong enough to spit on it---

she is strong enough, because when she comes to realize

that none of the supposed “wisdom” being spouted from the

lips of all the wrinkled up hags

that want her to live out the lives that they never got to

(and yet still pump out kids like a pez dispenser)

means a goddamned thing,

she will carve out a new existence for women in the coming

years &

she will not yield for fucking anyone. 

 

no, she does not need a partner.

no, she does not need a lover.

no, she does not need anyone---

because she’s busy burning away all that was

with one hand holding the kerosene &

one hand holding the match.