Obstacle Course
Poem written on September 2015 and performed multiple times. Most recently on January 21, 2017 at the Marcha Solidaria por la Mujeres in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
I walk down the street and it’s
like
an obstacle course
like
I’m alone
jump
I’m a girl
run
it’s dark
danger
I
sort stranger faces as if
they were death threats
I
evade shadows, look for people,
whitenesses of the incessant moves
that play in my mind of
every story, of every girl
that has disappeared into
the mouth of the wolf.
A parking lot.
Emptiness.
I expect to see unwelcoming faces.
A parking lot.
Security guard —
my nails stop scratching my sweaty palms
my mind reevaluates the environment,
alternating safe-ways with highways to hell.
A security guard.
Security.
And as I pass by a
“Hello”
Confusion.
Hello —
comes to me as discovering
the tooth fairy is not real.
Hello takes my certainties
and rolls them up like a bad first draft.
Hello rolls so fast from the guard’s tongue
that my hands are up high to catch it.
I pause.
Oblivious voices claim I’m an attention seeker
that I want it, that I’m asking for it
by wearing a shirt that says ‘Meow’
what else did I expect?
Perhaps he is just being polite
perhaps it is my own paranoia…
As I decide Hello is not a threat my
ears pound with a second charge.
HELLO — he says,
as if my hesitation had been that obvious,
as if he wanted to make his intent clear.
I turn around .
His crooked smile tells me
Hello is not a greeting
nor the checkpoint in the obstacle race.
Hello is
an invitation.
And I’m lucky.
I’m lucky it is an invitation
because sometimes
Hello decides you
need company on your way home,
that you are too alone, or
too pretty to be alone,
Hello is a shadow,
a hand trying to grab you;
Hello gets offended when you don’t smile back;
Hello feel it’s sexist if you cross the street;
Hello is not always an invitation.
And for the obstacle course women face daily,
there was no invitation either.
