The Spirit Bares Its Teeth

I don’t want to take her apart in the way most men would want to disassemble a woman. Not for any sort of power or hunger. I want to be close, and I don’t know how to be close unless I’m elbow-deep in innards

Would I choose to bear a child if I was allowed to keep my manhood through it? If pregnancy did not mean shedding my masculinity? I don’t actually know how much of my fear and revulsion is linked to the world’s inherent gendering of everything reproductive.

I didn’t know how to explain to her that I didn’t want to be a boy because it was easier than being a girl. I wasn’t pretending.

It was just that my girlhood was—and still is—simply, factually, incorrect

I want to lay her down on the couch, smooth my hands over her stomach, and take her apart to see her insides

I’d become like those women who go mad when faced with the power of their own bodies—when it’s harnessed to create something new against their will.

To separate how you are seen from who you are sometimes feels nigh impossible

It is only when I step back to see it all through another’s eyes that I want to unravel it and carve the meat into a new, different, more acceptable shape. The only thing that will ever matter is how others see you

I want to peel off all my skin, if only so I could be anything other than a naked body, something horrifying instead of vulnerable. Nobody looks at a pig corpse and thinks it could be made beautiful

When I see my body through Mrs. Forrester’s eyes, it’s misshapen. It’s ugly

There are lots of things my family shouldn’t have done to me