You can't spell lonely without one

Here I am, sitting in my window seat, 

Trying to finishing my indigenous feminisms reading and thinking about how I am single. 

This is not a metaphor.

Here I am sitting in my window seat

Reading papers about how in order to deconstruct the white colonialist patriarchy we (I) must acknowledge the radical idea that feminism is not just an intersectional thing but multiple knowledges in multiple contexts

And that in order to even strive for liberation we must first eschew the idea that liberation is rooted in the colonialist idea that it exists to serve the individual

And now I'm looking on facebook and Jocelyn Reyes has just moved into a house in the suburbs with her fiancé

He looks like a straight white cis-man

Here I am wondering what's wrong with me and why don't I have a fiancé who looks light a straight white cis-man and a house in the suburbs?

This is not a metaphor.

Here I am sitting at my window seat in the home I have carved out for myself

Trying not to text any of my lovers (none of whom are straight, white cis-men and none of whom I will ever live with in a house in the suburbs).

And trying to focus on this reading talking about the legal rights of Muscogee nation women to identify not as citizens of the United States but rather as sovereign members of the Muscogee tribe with the right to self-govern and wondering how I could possibly be making this about myself

This is not a metaphor. 

Here I am sitting in my window seat

Looking at the art of a yonic wasps nest water color (that may be a metaphor) I have pasted on my wall 

And trying to find the validation and strength inside me

In the twisted up pit of my stomach and tell myself that I am enough and 

I do not need a house in the suburbs and a straight, white cis-man fiancé (that I do not want a straight, white cis-man fiancé or a house in the suburbs)

And periodically glancing back at the reading that hangs open on the screen, sitting ambivalent and unchanging for when I work through this momentary crisis of faith and return to the homework that is due tomorrow.

This is not a metaphor.

Here I am searching for the keys to my own liberation like 

I left them in the back of a desk drawer or in a cluttered corner and it's 

Just a matter of finding the right words to string together or the right angle to look and 

There it is! My liberation. My contentment. My confidence. My sense of self and community. 

Me and the reading on indigenous feminisms both know that this is a lie.

But it has the good nature not to laugh at me.

This is not a metaphor.