Don’t Smile At Men

Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them.
-	Margaret Atwood

My mother told me:

Don’t smile at men 
when you’re out alone.
If you do, they might think
you are opening yourself to them. 
They might try to talk to you,
and of course you’ll talk back,
(you don’t want to be rude, a bitch, a cunt,) 
and then there goes your afternoon.
If you smile at him he might want more,
and if you don’t give it he might sneer and say,
Why did you smile if you don’t want attention?
I bet you walk around
giving smiles to all the men, whoring out your lips 
and teeth and tongue.

Practice keeping your face a blank façade,
a true neutral. Don’t look back when he looks at you.
Focus on a detail of the room, something over his shoulder - 
a sign, a painting, the carved relief of a table.
Study it
as if you can see its history,
as if you were going to write a poem about it. 
If you need to you can close your eyes, 
pretend you’re thinking deeply
until your proximity sensors stop thrumming. 
Make your body a concave figure,
ceding space as you retreat inward.

Maybe that sounds hard, a life spent fading 
into the background,
but I promise it gets easier
the more you practice. And if you do it right, 
you may live long enough
to feel the sunlight of your own 
daughter’s smile, and to know the fear 
that compels you to smother it.

.

Crawl

Tonight our streets will be safe.

Tonight we will wear flashing shoes and bicycle lights
 and ignite the pavements where we walk
like fireflies in thick grass.
Everyone will have the right to shimmer;
tonight we will not crawl along the walls like sticky shadows, 
shrinking into Is that you and Are you there,
so afraid of the loudness of seeing and being seen.

Tonight there will be no cars that slow to crawl alongside us 
as we falter our steps and try to make it home.
There will be no men with crawling hearts 
and deep gold badges for souls
staring out at us from tinted windows; 
men who do not know or care
that we are wanted at home,
waited for in the bed and at the table.

Tonight we will make ourselves known for what we are:
 antique, unique, irreplaceable,
placed beautifully within this world.
Right here is where we have the right to be.

Amanda Hiland is a queer writer living in Oregon. She is very fond of the ocean, colored pens, and chai. A Special Education teacher by day, she is also a major astronomy enthusiast at night. She spends her free time folding origami, hiking, and advocating for underserved communities. Her work has appeared most recently in VoiceCatcher, Epiphany, Willawaw Journal, and Cathexis.