Eveningtime Darlings

Well, Not Exactly.

I was never feminine. My shoulders rounded outwards further than they should have, my ribcage was broad and rippled when I breathed, and heavy brows hung over my eyes. My hair never grew thickly and long. I was never exactly pretty, I wasn't delicate enough. Not breakable enough. And from what I'd gathered, to be pretty, to be beautiful, one must be able to be dropped from a small height and shatter into thousands of fragments. Because masculinity came from strength, femininity therefore came from weakness.

I saw pictures of young women painted white in Japan. They were beautiful. Tiny. Silk in their hair. I saw a tall, ebonyskinned woman in the park. She was so narrow and slender-wristed. Her skin shone. Her short, coiled hair pressed against her scalp. Her teeth were alarmingly white. I saw a teenager on the streets, singing with a guitar in her lap. The lines of her were so smooth. Red hair tumbled down down her spine. I read Isabel Allende's descriptions of Eva Luna, with her breasts bobbing like plums in brassiere, and Arundhati Roy's Ammu, small and round-hipped, whose haunches could support a whole array of toothbrushes.

I realised that I did not want to be these women. In the shortness of my epiphany, I realised I wanted these women.

Today, I kiss the lips of another. She is the same. Well, not exactly. She is tall and flows freely between what almost every culture considers polar opposites. She is the sun and the moon, the bread and the wine. She is liquid in her form, and I fit with her like interlocking fingers.