midnight blue

Angry, and half in love with you, and tremendously sorry, I turned away.

The room was filled with conversations we weren’t having.

I don’t want just words. If that’s all you have for me, you’d better go.

I cried because I want my daughters to feel that blazing pride, that affirmation of their boundless capacity — not from their husbands, but from their world, from the atmosphere, from inviolable wells of certainty inside themselves. I cried because it’s not fair, and I’m so tired, and every woman I know is so tired. I cried because I don’t even know what it feels like to be taken seriously — not fully, not in that whole, unequivocal, confident way that’s native to handshakes between men. I cried because it does things to you to always come second.

Come and kiss me and let’s forget.