Ordinance of Origin: She who hides within a body declared masculine must be eradicated.

 

Instead of milk, my parents fed me drops of Mars by the bottle. They slathered masculinity over my skin like a viscous lotion. Year after year it didn’t matter if I cried, nor how frequently I hid my tears under the veil of a shower. The so-called safety of the red planet was supposed to protect me from being different. Mars represented a set of ideals: an ordinance of masculinity that orbited rigid around the centre of society. The first time I hitchhiked out of orbit was at age seven.