I saw my first professional women’s hockey game today.
Oh the physicality! Oh the anonymity! Oh the pleasure!
Ice meets speed of skates meets skills meets ten thousand strong in the stands.
I felt up gender in ways I never have.
Wondered how these women and fluid, expansive folx find it in them to take off their helmets.
Return to this world with rules, definitions too small, lusting to be stretched.
The Zambonied over resentments, oh how we’re treated “as women”. Wild Imaginings!
Different in uniform, not about being born a man, but about becoming as free as one.
These professional athletes, wicked wizards with blades and sticks,
Fly between gendered to agendered bodies, are bruised brave bellowing.
So with (a life time of and) three periods.
when the final whistle blows, we all head home
Waiting for the cis men in our lives to finally catch up.