Z Winter
headline says “Female dragonflies have been found to fake their own death to avoid unwanted male attention.” this can’t be fucking real. a quick google search shows a hundred reputable news sources say the same. another headline reads “Females take things to the extreme.”

Bitch, please.

last week I watched three gas station employees stop what they were doing to stop a homeless man from shoplifting. wrestled away from him a can of Steel Reserve, a Mountain Dew, and a bag of Bugles. freshman year of high school, ten other people look on. an older boy reaches over and pinches my nipple “as a joke”- “because you didn’t wear a bra”

I wonder when my dignity will be worth a junk food run.

I’m nineteen at a party and I’m definitely Too Drunk. there is a girl on the porch who can’t be more than sixteen. she is Way Too Drunk. there are suddenly four of us who do not know each other hauling her to the nearest bed, another gathering her bag and phone charger, another finding her friend who she came with. none of us need to tell each other what to do. we do not know each other. But We Know. I turn to the swaying room and a yell slurs out “everyone with a dick, get the fuck out!”

Because, you know, females take things to the extreme.

a timid faceless voice from the doorway says “Okay, but that’s my bed, can you make sure she doesn’t puke in it?”

“Fine.” She goes home safe. we still head count our friends every hour.

I’m twenty-two and a boy who’s attention I thought I wanted needs to pinch closed my nose to make my mouth the right shape, takes at least three “no’s” to take the hint, thinks his knees on my shoulders spell “yes”. he’s surprised by the shape my hand makes on his face. I pack my blood back in and run. Where did he learn this was something he wanted? Who taught him to forge fear? to mold compliance with rough fingers? to sand down sovereignty until her hinges won’t hold?

Its six in the morning and this MAX is barreling me to work sooner than I’d rather. the moon is sauntering home, heels in hand. this chevron station coffee is gasoline in a diesel engine and this fucking man wants to know if I have a boyfriend. now he wants to know why I have an attitude. why I’m so fucking uptight, do I just not like men or something? do I think I’m too good or something?

do I like how they drive away when I bark back, how our fists start to take the spit from their mouth?. they’re not expecting all 90 pounds of Justine to hold a pocket knife to their throat, but this time she does. this time she makes it home from the store. this time we toast the scabs we’ve grown.

I’m twenty and homeless. sleeping at a friend of a friend’s house. I just want to smoke a cigarette before bed but a man who lives in the complex holds me against the banister. I cannot go inside until I give him my number and a kiss. I think about the dragon fly. I wonder how long I would have to play dead for. til the ambulance comes? Longer? My hollow gut echoes with jokes about men eager to perform chest compressions, salivating over mouth to mouth.

Last night I found a dragonfly on my back porch, dead still except her abdomen pulsating, the ants already crawling into her head and feasting.

all respect to my dragonfly sisters, but,

that never was an option.

I won’t fake my own death for fear of knowing

what they would do with my body.