September 23, 2003
A Child Would Know Better
You cannot defeat me. I will swallow these insecurities and you might only occasionally see them when I haven't thrown up for a while, and they are peeking at the back of my throat when I am shouting, or telling a joke. You can't win, because you are a coward in private, and I wear my cowardice in public.
You are a weak man. I will not validate your weakness. I will not tell you what you want to hear; I will rage no more for your amusement. An angry woman is not a sideshow, she is real. She is the flame leaping out of that lantern just before it shatters against the sidewalk. You don't want to dance in that gasoline, because I am close, so close, and I am hungry.
Fire is quiet as it destroys, as it devours, as it grows tongue upon tongue for a stomach that cannot be filled, no matter the wealth that may fall into its path. I shall be quiet, as well. I shall surprise you, and not because I've dared to tell you to fuck off. You will eat my words, and your own, before I am finished.
You cannot defeat me. I have faced my own demons and they are more venomous than any your frail hand could conjure. I know I am full of acid and impossibility. I know that I love as though the very threads of my life depended upon it, I know I am capable of a hatred with as heavy of an anchor. You do not want to be my enemy. I do not make them. I erase them from existence.
You will never know a woman with a three dimensional mind, with a desire that burns like gasoline in an engine, with great gusts and wide expanses, with English moors in the morning, fog wreathed and mysterious. Your woman will be parchment thin, and you will embrace her only to have her crumple.
You will like it that way.
My name is Jillian Black. I am stronger than you. I write poems in blue and black and purple ink, but I will not write one for you. Not even for this fury so eager to be justified in metaphor and enjambment. I find grace when I am walking in the rain, when you hover under your umbrella and shrink and squirm. I feel the cold drops against my scalp and I know that thoughts will flourish, water bound, given shape to rise and seek to crush you. They won't. I've better uses for them.
I kiss my boyfriend on the lips and I draw his tongue into my mouth, I taste his love and his trust in every bead of saliva there. In his eyes I am mirrored as he sees me, as I know I am in shining moments revealed. But this is my reflection, and I fashion it as I will. He does not control me, and neither do you.
I am stronger than you. Each and every one of you.
astera at 12:07 a.m.