The girl you can’t miss.

Have you been repressing your girl cell lately? Hiding your femininity in a closet, fearing that it may be misunderstood, taken advantage of, ridiculed or betrayed?

Don’t think you’re too manly for this. In men and women alike, the girl cell is the part of you that feels ‘till it bleeds and starts revolutions; your emotional tastefulness; the genuine longing to reconnect to your essence; your vulnerability.

It’s the sensitive, romantic, poetic and creative you. That part of the soul that needs a massage even more frequently than your body.

You may only let her out every full moon or every other day; she may be quite awake or only agonizing in a corner. But she never gets tired of waiting. Go ahead. Ask her how badly she wants to dance with you. And stay to hear the answer.

The following 20 minutes could be the most uplifting, feminine and goosebumping of your day, or maybe week, or maybe life, if you sit back and let the ghost-girl say hello.

I promise.

And if you don’t have 20 minutes, the last 4 will still girlify you.

*BONUS –  Eve Ensler’s post-cancer girl splendor and a look at her V-revolution.  Occupy womanhood!

‘Cause if you “loooove being a girl” this is just the beginning. You have no idea how far that fragile, neglected girl can take you, if you’ll just grant her freedom of speech.

To honor my girl cell and save my emotional creature, I tried to give her some rhyme this time. There’s a poem (there’s always a poem!) that’s been following me for almost a decade.

I copied it on my arm off some book I can’t remember, and then I must have showered without memorizing it because all I have left of it now is the first verse.  I’ve been trying to find the rest of its body for ages, but no luck. I don’t even know the author and Google is not being honest with me.

So, WWMGD (What Would My Girl Do)? With a deep bow to Eve Ensler for ringing my emotional bell to the core once again; and shattering my uptight world into a more beautiful and vulnerable version, I decided to finish it off in my own words.

The relic is in italics, while the straight, crooked lines are all mine.

A woman young and old

If I make the lashes dark
And the eyes more bright
And the lips more scarlet,
Or ask if all be right
From mirror after mirror
No vanity’s displayed:
I’m looking for the face I had
Before the world was made.

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If I prefer to digest
My own thoughts, recycle language;
Remember the fire,
Change dance into dancing,
Or birdly decide
One thing, then another,
Much pinker inside
No insecurity’s swayed:
I’m just somebody’s Italy
In a Renaissance play.

If I’m a green roller-coaster
A wedding-crier, who laughs
At funerals, sighing
When pages are turned
In books and in time,
A chapter that’s laughing
In a novel that cries
No madness portrayed:
Just surviving the moonlight
On a full, paper heart.

And If I stay away
From genderless sorrow,
Or if I try to hide
From sexless, witch-hunting,
Or find vintage comfort
In words still undressed
No fear is displayed:
I’m looking for the femme they misplaced
Before killing the day.

If I’ve got sad eyes, it’s ‘cause
Dante’s Inferno
Is part of my messy,
Delayed paradise
And if I may now be ready,
For silence and grass
And sleeping at night;
I’m not running away:
But just thinking, you know, after all,
I may be ok.

If I’m a girl inside a woman,
inside a girl that a woman collaged;
a daughter to many
and a mother
to some
and also a lover
in youth and in wrinkles
live, love, lose and why,
to gain just a fracture
of joyful memoir,
deciding I’ve had
a hell of a ride…
No death is displayed:
I’m just finding the face I might keep
after my world is made.

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And you? What Would Your Girl Do? What’s her declaration of interdependence?

Creaturely speaking, are you emotional too?

[Photo: Edie Sedgwick capture from  Ciao Manhattan]