Alone with your body (There Are More Beautiful Things Than Beyonce)

Reading Parker's work feels like I am exploring my body all over again.

I found myself pausing multiple times in her pieces to explore them as I would my own body. After exploring I would end up confused, anguished and empowered. I felt this way mostly in Another Another Autumn in New York, We Don't Know When We Were Opened, and in Delicate and Jumpy. The solitude that the narrator of theses poems evokes made me wonder about the resistance I practice when I let my body exist. How there is something sacred about being alone with your body when you identify as a women. Because it is in those moments that we realize how "punk rock" we've gotten. We realize the strength we have accumulated from studying "Mamma making here face". We can't help but toss our hair and our bodies without permission in solitude because there we can not be consumed. We are liberated in those spaces we create for ourselves. However, there's also a bitter-sweetness to this solitude. Our "Robohearts" crave to be given the love we need. I know that I often forget to give myself the love I need, and that solitude can then quickly turn to loneliness. The specific narratives that Parker uses to depict this sense peace and ache I find when being alone with my body makes me question womanhood. 

I have been forced to believe that womanhood is docile and passive but I have found (within myself and Parker's text) that is vibrant and fluid. Much like the duality we see in all of Parker's pieces. There is an uplifting quality, a sort of sisterhood you find in her pieces. However there is also hurt and anger. You can also find mosaics of light blues and bright purples in her work alongside violent reds and sour yellows. The mosaic of colors coming together to make a cohesive account of womanhood, specifically black womanhood and the way that in itself is resistance.