By Zara Quiter, TIWP Student

Toxic masculinity is like any addiction.
Poisonous and sweet,
Aggressive and gentle.
It is that same drug that offers me a jacket when he sees I am cold,
who throws away my garbage and asks for my number.
Who texts me that night and says, “I’m glad.”
Do I smile at him, 
do I text him back, 
do I laugh?
Or do I scream at him to feel something for himself, 
like I can so obviously tell he feels something for me?
Bruno Mars may sing love songs about women, 
and I always notice,
he can proclaim anything about someone else.
Anything.

It is just that same thing who will never ask for a hug,
a moment to cry.
Be vulnerable and paint tattoos around your scars.
I have a strength he will never have:
a voice that actually voices.
Is that why society thinks poets are women or gay?
Well,
I think
anyone can be a man,
whatever that means.

Maybe it is growing up into someone who beats his girlfriend,
after distributing nudes in seventh grade.
Or a workaholic who comes home and drowns his sorrows as an alcoholic.
Maybe it is being that guy I know from the gym,
who brings along his year-old twins and cheers on his wife.
I hope so.

I hope that is who forgiving and forgetting turn our boys into,
for that is what I am seeing.
Letting go of logic, 
optimism is still impossible to attain for this generation of gentle parenting,
that turns their sons into aggressive beings, not gentle ones.
You say:
Boys will be boys… and girls will be.

Certainly not their tradwives,
their punching bags,
their secretaries who piece together their lives with our manicured hands.
Girls are mean, they are liars, they are selfish, bitches and witches. 
Who can hear you.
We have ears and a heart that beats,
bud-um, bud-um.
And tears that reach our eyes and bleed;
this is not weakness;
it is a power to cry away and blotch onto this page,
wipe away our mascara that promises self-satisfaction 
but just feeds a money-making cycle.

The C.E.O. of our eyelashes and all the things we see
is the brother of a sister of a friend of mine,
we will say over a glass of wine,
during our only reprieve from the children we have birthed only to give up to alone.
Falling asleep late and waking up too early,
there are dreams of a world where we sit up and say, 
“F*ck ‘em,
the bullies that closed my open-mouth smile,
the stigma that followed around a tampon,
the ineptitude I felt when I just put up my hair all week.”

Oh, I dream,
she dreams,
we all dream of someone taking the responsibility that they’re owed,
standing up to our full height even when we’ll never grow taller,
but as the sky keeps raining pebbles, 
filling up our lungs and clogging our throats 
as if our oceans were empty
and sending us 
right back 
to playing dollies and changing their dresses,
I wonder who we are supposed to be.
Where we are meant to go.
How on Earth we are supposed to wear a cute Halloween costume,
that brings us joy,
that is slutty,
but not too slutty,
but still feels too short, too small, too wide,
too everything and yet never enough,
Until we are not young enough to have a good time, 
not old enough to catch a break.
And at least they know how to suffer.
We have to exist in mystery and hypocrisy.
Men will be men… and women will be