Sometimes I laugh at myself in retrospect:

The way I carefully pick out my outfits, style my hair,

throw on the right amount of jewellery to perfect 

that effortless look - in those moments, I never realise 

that I’m doing it all for you. 

I look in the mirror without seeing that I’m 

imagining myself as you looking at me 

(in retrospect, I realise that I am what John Berger meant 

about women in Ways of Seeing). 

When I offer the correct answer in class, 

triumphantly eliciting a nod, a murmur of “excellent” from our teacher, 

I revel in the shallow puddles of his admiration, 

drown in the envy that pools on your face,

which I carefully pick out from the way 

you purse your lips and pick at your nails - or at least, 

which I have trained myself to see. 

When you offer the correct answer in class 

I feel the pit of my stomach widen. I cling 

to your every word; sit in the hollows of your punctuation;

infatuated with your syntax; while I wait, expectant 

in an apprehensive sort of way, for you to stutter; 

make a mistake; overload your sentences with one too many 

sophisticated words and accidentally displace any meaning, 

because it’s only then 

(when our classmates roll their eyes, 

consider you overzealous)

that I win. 

When we speak, looking 

at each other and yet missing the other completely, 

(seeing not each other but the paucities of ourselves)

I string together every word you say 

and decipher it like a rebus, looking for 

that hidden meaning, that undercurrent of jealousy, 

which I will store behind my tongue 

to taste in rationality 

until our next conversation. 

But these are things I would never admit to you. 

Though the foundation of these games we play is, 

undeniably, 

the chasing of some chimerical victory over the other, 

to admit that I am (as they say) jealous, is to admit 

that I believe you to have something I don’t. 

And I’ve grown so use to this dynamo we dance to, 

that I wouldn’t be able to tell if

I was the only one still dancing. 

But, you know. That’s the way it is. 

I guess girls will be girls.