|| 'B' (If I should have a daughter) || Hiroshima || Hands || Postcards || Extended Development || Montauk || Forest Fires || Dreaming Boy ||
|| The Type || Beginning, Middle and End || Repetition || Teeth || An Origin Story || When Love Arrives ||
|| The Type || Beginning, Middle and End || Repetition || Teeth || An Origin Story || When Love Arrives ||
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If you grow up the type of woman men want to look at,
You can let them look at you.
But do not mistakes eyes for hands
Or windows, or mirrors.
Let them see what a woman looks like -
They may not have ever seen one before.
If you grow up the type of woman men want to touch,
You can let them touch you.
Sometimes it is not you they are reaching for;
Sometimes it is a bottle, a door, a sandwich, a Pulitzer, another woman -
But their hands found you first.
Do not mistake yourself for a guardian,
Or a muse, or a promise, or a victim, or a snack.
You are a woman, skin and bones, veins and nerves, hair and sweat -
You are not made of metaphors, not apologies, not excuses.
If you grow up the type of woman men want to hold,
You can let them hold you.
All day they practice keeping their bodies upright,
Even after all this evolving it still feels unnatural.
Still strains the muscles, hold firm the arms and spine.
Only some men will want to know what it feels like
To curl themselves into a question mark around you,
Admit they do not have the answers they do not have by now.
Some men will want to hold you like the answer
You are not the answer.
You are the problem, you are not the poem or the punchline
Or the riddle, or the joke.
Woman, if you grow up the type men want to love,
You can let them love you.
Being loved is not the same thing as loving.
When you fall in love, it is discovering the ocean after years of puddle-jumping.
It is realising you have hands;
It is reaching for the tightrope when the crowds have all gone home.
Do not spend time wondering if you are the type of woman men will hurt.
If he leaves you with a car alarm heart, you learn to sing along.
It is hard to stop loving the ocean,
Even after it has left you gasping, salty.
So forgive yourself for the decisions you’ve made -
The ones you still call mistakes when you tuck them in at night
And know this:
Know that you are the type of woman who is searching for a place to call yours
Let the statues crumble
You have always been the place
You are the kind of woman who can build it yourself
You were born to build.
You can let them look at you.
But do not mistakes eyes for hands
Or windows, or mirrors.
Let them see what a woman looks like -
They may not have ever seen one before.
If you grow up the type of woman men want to touch,
You can let them touch you.
Sometimes it is not you they are reaching for;
Sometimes it is a bottle, a door, a sandwich, a Pulitzer, another woman -
But their hands found you first.
Do not mistake yourself for a guardian,
Or a muse, or a promise, or a victim, or a snack.
You are a woman, skin and bones, veins and nerves, hair and sweat -
You are not made of metaphors, not apologies, not excuses.
If you grow up the type of woman men want to hold,
You can let them hold you.
All day they practice keeping their bodies upright,
Even after all this evolving it still feels unnatural.
Still strains the muscles, hold firm the arms and spine.
Only some men will want to know what it feels like
To curl themselves into a question mark around you,
Admit they do not have the answers they do not have by now.
Some men will want to hold you like the answer
You are not the answer.
You are the problem, you are not the poem or the punchline
Or the riddle, or the joke.
Woman, if you grow up the type men want to love,
You can let them love you.
Being loved is not the same thing as loving.
When you fall in love, it is discovering the ocean after years of puddle-jumping.
It is realising you have hands;
It is reaching for the tightrope when the crowds have all gone home.
Do not spend time wondering if you are the type of woman men will hurt.
If he leaves you with a car alarm heart, you learn to sing along.
It is hard to stop loving the ocean,
Even after it has left you gasping, salty.
So forgive yourself for the decisions you’ve made -
The ones you still call mistakes when you tuck them in at night
And know this:
Know that you are the type of woman who is searching for a place to call yours
Let the statues crumble
You have always been the place
You are the kind of woman who can build it yourself
You were born to build.
|| 'B' (If I should have a daughter) || Hiroshima || Hands || Postcards || Extended Development || Montauk || Forest Fires || Dreaming Boy ||
|| The Type || Beginning, Middle and End || Repetition || Teeth || An Origin Story || When Love Arrives ||
|| The Type || Beginning, Middle and End || Repetition || Teeth || An Origin Story || When Love Arrives ||