I.
Every fifth Sunday, I go to the pharmacy and wait for the nice man in the white coat
to get me my birth control. I do this every fifth Sunday because even though it’s ready
by Tuesday, I ignore all the CVS courtesy calls and forget to go until I’m out of pills.
Every month it’s the same,
the little blue cardboard sleeve
the blister pack with the little blue pills
and the little white pills
and the little green pills
four perfect rows of seven,
an untouched month of potential.
Four perfect rows of seven
that I haven’t yet fucked up.
Four perfect rows of seven.
No pills suspended on Wednesdays when I forgot to take them,
no punched in days from my hurried thumbs,
no bent weeks, no broken foil,
nothing out of place,
no days of eating too much,
or staying up too late,
or talking too loud,
or acting too crazy—
No shame, yet.
Some days I can’t swallow my pills. Some days
they sit on my tongue
and they taste like regret.
I try to fill my empty space with water and hormones that stop me from bleeding too much
but the pain finds its way out in other places.
I’m always starting over, starting over, starting over.
II.
The first time I kissed a girl
outside of spin the bottle,
I’m talking the first time I kissed a girl
I stopped taking my birth control
as an act of queer rebellion.
I started imagining our sex life first,
tender and easy and insatiable,
and then I started imagining our wedding,
one of us wearing white lace and the other in black,
colored tuxes for my best man and Mx. of honor,
how elegant and precious it would all look,
how subversive.
And so I stopped taking my pills
because I wanted to kiss this girl! I wanted to sleep next to this girl!
I wanted to have sex with this girl!
and I imagined the sweet liberation of two vaginas in a bed
and no pregnancy to be afraid of.
but I was so afraid!
and maybe if I made some symbolic gesture
I would actually follow through.
III.
When I stopped taking my birth control cold,
or maybe when I started kissing this girl
(as I said, they coincided),
I felt more like myself than I had felt in years.
My imbalanced hormones clawed back into my body, giving me the
polarized experience of my younger self:
volatile and weepy and screechy and
free.
The pills had never cured my acne like they were supposed to.
They’d just dampened the red in my blood.
Now it was back, vindictive.
I wasn’t sure which way was up or down
or right or wrong
but every caffeinated moment was thrilling.
I felt dangerously alive.
IV.
The night I finally had sex with the first girl I kissed
it was squishier than I’d imagined.
She almost fell off the bed
because I couldn’t keep my arms and legs inside the vehicle.
Have you ever tried to take off someone else’s skinny jeans?
Bras without hooks are hard to remove from your own body
but my god what a mess to try to remove them from someone else’s.
I had missed my period the week before.
I didn’t get another one for four months after.
It was like my body had forgotten about that reproduction thing
that fertilization thing
that straight thing.
V.
I almost wished I were a straight-up lesbian
so I didn’t have to go back on birth control
the next time I saw the gynecologist.
Where there are cis men involved,
there are rules to be followed and pills to be swallowed,
ones that muffle my spirit while they prevent pregnancy.
I don’t want to have a child
but I do want my roller coaster of a demeanor.
I want my racecar acceleration,
my ambulance heart.
