Sometimes I wonder who I’d be if I were a boy if I had sharp angles all over my face and a flat chest and a deep voice and a guttural rock and roll scream tough and certain and laughing loud and kissing girls 

and then I wonder if masculinity and femininity are toys to take out of a chest and play with then put away or if they’re baked into us from the minute we’re born 

and then I wonder if I can steal from men’s type of masculinity and take the bravado and the freedom to be stupid, boys will be boys, the brotherhoods, the camaraderie in idiocy, girl’s don’t get to be charmingly stupid, male stupidity is allowed to exist for teenage shenanigans before you go back to being Important men, sweet silly little girl, don’t you know stupidity is for boys

and then I think again about stealing from women’s type of masculinity, masculinity that keeps all the protection and strength and tailored suits and short hair except it’s all for us, and straight people don’t know what to do with them, because a masculine lesbian and a feminine gay man is for one-off jokes and sitcom characters, queerness is woman’s masculinity and woman’s non-woman-ness and her woman-ness and woman and feminine are not twins or even sisters
 
and then I think about women’s type of femininity, I love women who weaponize femininity in this cruel world that punishes women for everything and you’d think men would have so much freedom but we punish them too when they cry because crying is for women and women are beneath you, and what could be worse than failing to be a man, what else is there, shameful womanhood “womanhood”, as defined by men, because “manhood” and “womanhood” are just funhouse mirrors so what’s breaking them going to do but bring us closer to our reflections