Main Street Magazine Spring '23

the dark closet, wishing her life away and wishing even more that she didn’t feel like this.
One day, a kid in her lab group pisses her off for the millionth time. He wouldn’t listen to her. He didn’t know how to
do the calculations; she did. No don’t write that, I’ll just ask. The teacher said the same thing that she did. He even
said that she specifically was right. But it’s only right when he says it. That’s not what you said. If you were right, I
would’ve known how to do it anyway. Her heart pounds in her ears and her clothes start feeling itchy and hot on her
damp skin and she must dismiss herself to the bathroom so that she doesn’t just scream in his face and tear his
paper to shreds. She almost knocks down her stool while rushing to get up, and he stares at her with bewilderment
as if she has gone truly insane. Her breath heaves in the stall and her mind is reeling.
She is now overwhelmingly aware of her choice to be the silent, obedient girl in the corner, because it’s easier
than pushing back against the world that has boxed her in. To that kid, it doesn’t matter how smart she is, she’s
just easy to dismiss and walk over.
She can't be this girl anymore. She wants
people to know her inner thoughts. just
because they have'nt been heard doesnt mean
they're wrong.
She goes home and reads from a copy of The Book of Folly that her grandmother gifted her. Anne Sexton
talks of the sadness instilled in women for the entirety of history. Handed down like an heirloom but hidden
like shameful letters. Female sexuality, female power. Fire woman, you of the ancient flame. She decides
she wants to be a woman that other women can relate to. Your voice is out there. Your voice is strange. She
slowly starts wearing clothes more fitting to her body. Jeans that fit her waist. Shirts that cling to her figure.
You are leaving your old body now. She starts getting compliments on her hair, her outfits, her jewelry. She
stops judging the other girls at school with her friends; she feels a guilt deep in her soul knowing that their
brains were taught to think in the same ways hers was.
She starts off buying cheap drugstore makeup, only putting it on in the presence of her mirror. For a while
she gets too embarrassed, scrubbing her face red and hiding everything so that there’s no proof of the
woman within her that she wants to become. Eventually she is ready to wear makeup outside of the comfort
of her cave. The paradox of it still amazes her; she hates that this is a whole industry built of women’s
naturality not being good enough, and yet she has never felt more feminine than she does when she wears
it. She isn’t totally sure if it’s empowerment or conformation, but she still wears it. She imagines generations
upon generations of women painting themselves just like this, every morning,
and all the other women on this Earth building themselves the same way
she does. She lets her hair grow down to her waist, finding comfort in
the way its waves warm her neck and cascade down her torso. She
imagines women hundreds of years ago in every culture braiding their
hair the same way she braids hers every night.
She works up, or at least fakes, enough courage to speak up in class,
arguing with the asshole men at every chance she gets, even if it’s
not necessary. Some dude she was forced to sit next to in class
asks why she won’t shut the fuck up, and she asks why she should
have to. Go back to the kitchen, he “jokes”. I don’t get it. When
have I ever been in a kitchen? Why would I go back? She smirks at
him, watching his ego deflate like a balloon as his friends all go silent,
goofy grins wiped off their faces. When she plays only Taylor Swift music
in her car, it is met with her guy friends calling her a bitch and pestering her
to change it. My car my rules. They laugh as if that’s a joke and wait for her
to snap out of it, but she doesn’t. They give each other a look and shrug it off. She
turns the volume up louder.
She reads Virginia Woolf talking about the power of silenced women and a room of one’s own. She reads Helene
Cixous telling her that Flying is women’s gesture—flying in language and making it fly. She joins a creative writing
class and shares the most intimate depths of her brain with the only teacher she feels cares to know her, who
tells her mom that she has a talent for making a scene come alive. He has no idea the impact these silly little
words have had in her life. Although he is a writer himself, he will still never understand the pressures that beat
on her brain from allowing her soul onto the paper, and how his words have unlocked that cage.
Now that she knows she can write and people
will read it, she will never stop.
After moving away from home, her words only grow stronger in her mind and on paper. She’s traded in her
journal for a laptop. Her dark and cluttered closet for a bright dorm room decorated with pictures of the
women she looks up to. Her timidness for confidence. She takes classes that teach Helene Cixous and
Virginia Woolf and uses their words as permission and inspiration for her to write herself. Her laptop is filled
with stories, poems, essays, whatever she can think to write. It’s no longer a lie when she tells people that
she feels better now, that writing makes her feel better. I am filling the room with the words from my pen.
by Lindsey Arnold, Art by Erin mckeen
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