WEBVTT

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To the man in the car who shouted

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"<i>I like a big girl in bed, baby. More room to paint on.</i>"

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I said nothing.

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I pretended you meant "paint".

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I walked away
complemented.

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In class, I learn about the tradition 
of the pastoral landscape.

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How it tames the wild out.

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That nature is a frenzied horse

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most useful after it is broken.

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Later, I remember how your thin limbs
dangled out of the car.

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I remember your mouth,
not your own, you said

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"<i>Darling, your body is like... a landscape.</i>

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<i>The rolling hill of you.</i>

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<i>The orchard I would set on fire 
to match the colour of your mouth."</i>

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And for a moment I think you meant it.

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Desirability is a clever thief.

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It steals you away from your body.

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Casts subject as object,

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if it means I am wanted.

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I know bodies like mine can only 
be talked about in metaphor.

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My stomach could be the curve of a sand dune;

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my calves a flexing ocean;

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you could hook up with a mountain of a body;

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you could describe it later 
as legs you climbed aaaaall the way up.

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But a fat body,

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a dirty sidewalk,

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is too big to be worthy of a human form.

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So when I talk about myself

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I describe a landscape,

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a skyline,

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a galaxy of a woman,

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a palatable vastness.

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I ask myself if I could be the sun 
streaking someone else's sky awake?

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Desirability means my favourite compliment

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came when a man told me that my mouth

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reminded him of a jar of fireflies
on a hot southern night.

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I grew up in Portland.

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[ <i>audience laughs and cheers</i>]

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I have no idea what a jar of fireflies feels like.

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But I bet you it's beautiful like the paintings.

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Something you can hang up 
and show off to strangers,

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say this piece shows that nature is a frenzied swarm,

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but god damn, how pretty 
the jar tames it.

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There are days the body positivity movement
does not prepare you for.

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Like the day you have to take your body back

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from the only way people allow themselves 
to find it beautiful.

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To say that my mouth?

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Does not firefly.

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My body?

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Is not a landscape.

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I. Am not. A fucking orchard.

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Or a crate of bruised fruit
on the road you stop at,

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on the way to some beautiful hillside 
with curves in aaaall the right places.

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My body is goooood.

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Like. A body.

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I take up

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this

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much.

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space.

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I'm not some sprawling. thing. in the distance.

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I am right here!

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I.

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Am right.

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Here.

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[<i>audience cheers</i>]