(unfinished thoughts)

when did he teach you how to be a woman?

when did his voice

educate you with its depth of tone

that yours was of a different quality? 

when did his hands

start to make yours look small? 

did it happen suddenly, 

or was it a gradual lesson? 

was it slow, 

or was your femininity suddenly defined by his male standard, the bar

by which your life would come to be measured- 

was it explicit? 

when did he show you how to be a woman? 

was it when you were still a girl? 

was it earlier than that?

was it a part of you, some inevitable blueprint, 

a chromosomal foundation activated by some binary chemical reaction? 

when did he turn you on? 

when did he tell you how to be a woman 

not through his actions,

but through a language of otherness, 

the father tongue of your motherland? 

was it hard to understand at first, or did translating your experience

come easily? 

when did he divide your existence from his? 

(unfinished thoughts)