Poetry: Girl Crush

Girl Crush

when i was younger i chose my superpower: to turn invisible

invert myself into a shimmering silhouette, the kind you see

on television so the audience doesn’t lose track.

i thought it would be easier than flying, which seemed

unreliable; the fear of learning to drive already within me

and the mind-reader’s burden of brutal honesty was frightening

when i was older i realised not all girls looked at jessica alba

the same way i did, sneaking pictures of james cameron’s leather

feminism, wet from a nineties printer and hidden under my pillow.

in school, another jessica;  i braced myself through bullying

for the thrill of her cold blues eyes on mine.

at university when the term “fag hag” didn’t seem problematic

i danced on stages, occasionally meshing faces with the soft-lipped

skin of other women and feeling rebellious. watching the l word

and crying over shane, an indigo girl cliche. in the morning

brushing vodka from my breath in the bathroom of a girl

with an unplaceable accent, i thought finally i had arrived.

i never used the term bisexual to describe myself,

learned to look down after an ex-boyfriend read the pronouns

of my poems, watching the revulsion run through him like an

electric current. A curdled confession at the kitchen sink,

my mother kept on cooking dinner and said nothing.

And now it feels too late, i’m a double agent mistaken frequently

for the whole of my half, and the media still laughs and uses words like

“girl crush” to hold us at a verbal arms-length. My boyfriend chuckles

when i choose a female would-you-rather, an expanse of space

between us as he waits for me to backtrack. To him the joke

is what the guys on offer lack,

rather than what these women have.