the women/the men

the women get burned alive and lie in critical condition for days with burns over 40% of our bodies. burnt by an entire society. our faces disfigured by a backwards religion, families that will no doubt say we deserved it. why didn’t we see it coming? the women swallow the criticism. if we knew what poison tasted like, this would be it. bitter, heavy, vomit-inducing. like gasoline./the men get to say they heard voices telling them to burn us. but whose voices were these? was it that of his father, booming, frighteningly authoritarian? the voice that narrates the story of how a man should be? or was it the voice of his mother, telling him to stop crying like a girl and play outside with the boys? the boys who chop the tails off lizards for fun.

the women have our cars crashed into and then get shot in the face. in plain daylight, on the highway, as families drive by to do their sunday shopping, run their sunday errands, go to church to say their sunday prayers./the men are ex-police officers, who have taken vows to make us feel safe. the men have the law on their side. the men are the fucking law. with their clubs and their guns. you’re not stupid, you understand the implied metaphors.

the women get stabbed in the chest as we sleep next to our new boyfriends. perhaps men whose touches don’t burn with hate. but then again...everyone is always caught by surprise. no, not him, they will say, as our blood drips from their complacent hands. the hands they tied themselves with ropes braided together by traditions they swear must be maintained./the men are the fathers of our children. the men break into our apartments. the men get to decide when our lives should end because we are always “sus mujeres.” sus mujeres, who have no right to be with other men. and so they rationalize their crimes. la pegaera de cuernos. celos. la cabrona was asking for it. of course.

the women need 123 stitches to close up the gashes after being attacked with a broken bottle. how many stitches will we need to sew our mouths closed so we don’t talk back? or our vaginas? to keep them nice and tight for the men who own them, who decide when to open them. this is how they love us, yes? silent, subservient, and sealed shut?/the men get to have their identities protected by the police. and their actions justified by the media. a crime of passion, the television reporter says—all cleavage and hair—her fuchsia lips untrembling, not showing any sign of the weight those words hold in her mouth.

love? passion?

i have loved men so deeply i can still feel them in my skin. i have lusted after these men to the point where i imagine my hands are theirs as i touch myself to sleep when alone at night. on the cusp of love and lust lies passion. and in this intersection, there is no violence. there are no machetes, no broken bottles, no four by fours, no rifles, no hand guns, no matches, no metal pipes, no shards of broken glass, no vehicular homicides. my life is not in fucking danger when these two emotions collide. think of another term, mass media. (i will help you.) don’t place the blame on an emotion in which I feel most at home.

On Many Malignant Conditions

Last night, this is what I dreamed:

A tortuous session of should-i-call-him-yes-no-wait-yes-nonononono-wait-yes. And so I call him and a woman with an American accent and an upper-middle class, well-educated lilt to her voice picks up his cell phone and says, “Hello?” I don’t know why, but in my dream I know what she looks like. She is pretty, in a white woman sort of way, like a bird you might see in a New England forest and might want to hold in the palms of your hands. I ask for him but I don’t remember if I got to talk to him. I do remember what the feeling in my stomach was like: like pulling a hot nail through a leather belt in order to make another notch. Pushing, pulling, reheating the nail so it can pierce the ungiving material more efficiently. If this skin were still alive, it would scream.

A tsunami. Waves taller than skyscrapers. Waves you can see for miles. Giant walls of aquamarine and everyone running as if they could possibly escape. I too run. Until I realize the impossibility of it all. I can’t outrun this. That is when I stop and wait for the wave to push me off my feet and into a decision: hold your breath and swim or give up and die.

Then I woke up.

Now I am in the gynecologist’s office waiting for the doctor to explain to me why cells are multiplying abnormally in my cervix. “Don’t worry,” he says over the phone as he tells me to come in for more tests, “this does not necessarily mean cancer.” Not necessarily, i.e. not an inevitability, not a reason for me to jump off a building.

What it does mean:
He must perform a colposcopy. Which means he sticks a microscope into my vagina to see my cervix better. He swabs my cervix with ascetic acid. I don’t know what ascetic acid is. Areas that turn white are the fucked up ones that must be tested further.

Many areas came up white. He draws me a map of my cervix and explains where the troublesome spots are. I wish I could have seen inside of me to see what my hurting cervix looked like. I want to reach into myself, cut out the abnormalities with an X-acto blade, sop up the blood with paper towels printed with sunflowers and smiley faces, put those abnormalities in jars, and place them on my bookshelf. These pieces of me that I acknowledge but don’t want inside of me. Like so many memories…

I’m scared as fuck and I’ve always hated male gynecologists. Especially the way this one pushes my legs open to get a better look. Perhaps if he was a woman and we were not in a country dominated by machismo, he would have asked me if I could please open my legs a little more. When I would do it, he would say, “that’s it. That’s much better.” But since we are here and he is a man, he feels entitled to my body and he does not do or say such things.

I will need a biopsy. It will hurt and I should bring a friend with me just in case I’m in too much pain to leave on my own afterward. I think, who the fuck would I ever ask to go with me? This is not something I do, this letting people know I am vulnerable and might sometimes need their help. Shit.

I leave with an appointment for a biopsy in a week. He assures me that “we are not worried.” Yet. There are tears in my eyes. This is what I will do: I will buy a bottle of wine, drink it, and fall asleep. I will dream that this never happened, that there are no male gynecologists with gold chains to make me feel uncomfortable, that I will have a healthy baby, that my insides will never break ever again, and I will be okay.

There will be no tsunamis in my dreams. No high-class women picking up the phone of the man I thought would be there for me.