she said, [writing exercise]

I've got to figure the universe is on fire, I've got to figure it fast and loose. My hands on the wheel and the highway like stars, the vroom vroom infinity. I figure it's reckless to be a woman, it has to be, otherwise women go mad from waiting to become themselves. My grip on the wheel is tight but not tense, I know the secret to the everything is how you hold it.

..His hands were like vice grips on my hips, his hair in my fingers like seaweed, limp from sweat. This is not pleasure. He asks if it's good, I moan from another body, one he is not burrowing into. Maybe I answer from Audrey Hepburn's body. I imagine that I'm the 60s sex-kitten, with pouty lips and a micro-mini and not with a pair of jeans around my ankle and a cotton sweater sticking to my back. In the other body, there is an orgasm building: my mind follows suit and I yell like..

I'm an archer and my quiver is empty. This is the state of the whole fucking world. Once I met a woman who had lost her baby, she was disappearing into nothingness holding her stomach. In two months, she wasn't anything. Half-dead, half-alive, completely invisible. Women are meant to be more than mothers. Women are soldiers and the war is.

..the universe on fire: cosmos like mouths and we're standing at it, praying broken prayers to the void. There is one body and one must use it. I was lying on the hood of his jeep and his skin pressing against mine was like fire. This is pleasure. Everywhere sparks were click-clicking into stars and I was full of a feeling like falling. I am not Audrey Hepburn. I am not a washing machine. I am

your girl, and I will protect you.*



*line from Xiu Xiu's, "Sad Pony Guerilla Girl"