Everywhere Girl

On all the schemes where I lived before I was twelve

Girls could fight and swear and kick a football around, just like the boys

Though nobody saw their game as football football – just tomboys and hard lassies

And heaven forfend you showed early signs of being queer (before you even knew what that was)

That would get you barred from the houses on the block, while all the mammies tutted and blew smoke in each other’s faces

Eventually, it was decided that I did too much fighting like the boys (I’d needed to learn to defend myself)

And a fancy girls’ school far from the viciousness of the East End offered a free place

An odd mix of sturdy, rosy-cheeked sporty types, pony girls and mothers waving from flashy cars

Expensive education means you can be more subtle with your viciousness

A giggle and a snide comment about the mispronunciation of an Italian designer’s name, perhaps

Later, edging closer to that ‘metropolitan elite’ that today’s alt-right bang on about

Was a journey via weaponised sexuality and Playboy merch

To prudish debates about stripping in university halls with a comforting bookish smell

Onwards to outright rejection of anything ‘ladylike’ and wrecking my voice trying to be irreverent

Then channelling all that aggression into a contact sport

And all the confusion about my queerness into years of denial and exploration

Until eventually things started to fall into place

Embracing the comfort and horror of self-awareness

Celebrating the parts that those mammies shamed

Meeting my match and walking defiantly through the world with them

Queering a ritual I had always written off as undiluted misogyny

Stepping cautiously into my power

And rolling up my sleeves, ready to take on those who would put us all back in our gender boxes.