Be the change you want to see.

You want me to remove that hair
It's unsightly
You want me to scrape off the skin
Not soft or inviting
You want me to wear smaller clothes
Fewer clothes
I should offer my soft moisturized young vulnerable unprotected skin
To your gaze
To your ... Touch?
To your consumption

My hair should be long and yankable
Clothes easily slip off-able
Legs long and shapely in heels that prevent me from running

Shoes that invite injury or your sexual attention
Are not for me.
Scraping the protection from my skin
Is not for me.
Clothes that give me shivers
Not for me

But then the whole business has always been about you anyway
Your gaze
Your desire
Your ... Access. To me

No.
I am old enough to want myself
And canny enough to tell the young girls about you
And strong enough to teach them how to protect themselves.

I protect them.
I protect myself.
You have to earn your way past these walls.
We build them strong. We build with confidence. We value ourselves as the first, most important treasure.

Only the deserving will earn our precious selves.

The prompt was "Nessie" but I'm taking this somewhere else underwater.

Longing. Have you ever been shamed for what you craved? Has your longing ever been pointed out as wrong or weird or twisted or broken or an imposition or something unnecessary?

I have. I've been shamed for wanting things, for wanting experiences, for wanting people. And I don't think that was right. And most days I'm okay, most days it feels like I'm over it, but today is not one of those days.

The thing about a longing is it doesn't come out of your mind. It's not a thought. It wells up from deep in your belly, deep in your heart, or dare I say it, spirit or soul. You can't talk yourself out of a longing.

You can hold yourself quiet about it, can keep the surface of your personal pond pristine and peaceful. Still, underneath the surface something lives, something moves, something travels. Something roils the water beneath the surface.

And there are days where I can no longer bear to live on the quiet pristine peaceful surface. On a day like today, I sink below to the Deep places, where the water presses through my flesh and into my bones.

I sink down to the deep mud churned places, where I can finally breathe.

day 8 Prompt: Yokai

Yokai is a word I looked up:
I don't know Japanese culture.
Bits. Fragments, only, really.
Kitsune the only example I recognized.
Dim memory that :demon: in that millenia old culture
Means something quite different
than what I might assume.
*
Trickster? Demigod? Supernatural being of uncertain motivations?
Is Yokai more like the Fae of Irish tradition?
Or Coyote in Southwest North America?
*
My ignorance is large.
I don't even know if the word is singular or plural
(I'd guess plural)
Wondering could I compare Loki, Hermes, Anansi, in the same category
(are there female Yokai?)
*
Seanan McGuire has a character who's Kitsune.
That's pretty much my whole experience.
*
There's a whole deep mythology I'm missing.
I may never understand.
*
I forgive myself for my own ignorance
and I pray I'll be lucky enough
or kind enough, or careful enough
that others will forgive me for my ignorance, too.

5: Laboratory

I'm so angry today, and disappointed.
Tempted to make some hackneyed reference
To the Laboratory of Democracy
That America is supposed to be
But the time machine struck land
November 9, 2016
And now we live in the alternate timeline.
And this ain't the GOOD timeline.

Prompt: Black Cat (for Rosalyn, the cat that was almost mine too)

fingers down your spine, ruffling your fur
softly blinking down at you
i love you i love you i love you with every blink

you blink back
you offer belly
my eyes fill with tears
this is a new trust
a new vulnerability

in a life that had precious little trust
and even less vulnerability to spare
that moment
long elegant legs outstretched
rusty red tipped black plush fur
warm along my leg on a cold day

i plunged my hand into your fur, but gently
i relished the moment, my heart hurting
but blinked back down at you

i love you i love you i love you