THE GIRL BECOMES GASOLINE

A series of things that have happened to me on airplanes:

As a child with motion sickness, I threw up on the first eight flights I was ever on.

On my way to Amarillo, I threw up in my seat

On the way to California, I threw up on my sister.

On the way to New York, I threw up in front of the bathroom door.

Last year, I was seated next to a man in a three-piece suit who loudly berated the flight attendants because e-cigarettes shouldn’t count as smoking.

Why are you wearing a suit on an airplane?

You sound like an asshole!

And you look uncomfortable.

On my lasts three flights, I’ve been seated in front of the plane’s required screaming child.

Maybe it’s a tired baby.

Maybe I’m actually the one screaming.

Maybe it’s my vomit-covered sister time-travelling to haunt me.

On the last flight, I fell asleep next to a man who looked like my father, which means I wasn’t worried.

I woke to his wedding ring digging into my waist

His hands on my thigh like an unwanted houseguest.

It is moments like these I feel more sputter than storm

More candle than bonfire.

My friend Greg is asleep behind me undisturbed.

Ben is talking to the woman next to him about her grandchildren.

And I, in the center of this airplane, am taking up too much space by existing.

I’m apologizing to this man next to me in hopes that this will be it.

If you don’t follow me off the plane to my next gate like the man did on my way to Denver

Or on my way to Minneapolis

Or on my way home

Or the way across the country.

A man is reclining his seat into my 14 year-old sister’s lap

Is yelling at her for her legs

For having a body.

Or the way the boy in my Geology lecture follows me from seat to seat

Ignores empty rows

Puts his arm on mine

Mistakes my shrinking for permission –

Which is to say that my body is too woman to really mean anything

Is too woman to be considered a threat

Is too woman to have rights to my own space

Or to have rights.

I don’t know when I became a space to be filled

My thigh, open lease

My neck, a wishing well

His hot breath, a coin

A demand cast into me

So know this:

Each unwanted hand, gasoline

Each prodding hand, flint

Each time a man assumes my space, he is just stoking the flame

And a spark stoked enough will burn down the whole house.