Not marriage material.
Not soulmate material.
Not even necessarily second-date material.

Just: would I put on mascara and leave the house for one drink?

• does not need rescuing before the first drink

• has been single long enough that I am not the rebound, the therapist, or the plot device

• does not need me to be available before I am available

• is willing to pause the apps long enough to find out whether we fit

• doesn’t vanish between messages unless national security is involved, and even then gives a heads-up

• says “Would you like to get a drink?” like a person who understands both desire and consent

• lets the conversation become interesting before making it sexual

• can banter without negging

• responds to the actual thing I said and asks the next question

• knows that one good conversation is still worth having

• can mention therapy without turning it into either a confession or a credential

• can talk about his ex and his mother without making either one a saint or a monster

• can name someone in his origin story with gratitude

• has at least two close friends

• talks about children like they are actual people

• understands that my children come first and that love is not a zero-sum game

• understands that politics is not “just politics” when people’s rights are on the line

• understands that faith and justice are not separate rooms in my house

• meets my intelligence with admiration, not competition

• looks me up enough to know I have a brain, not enough to be alarming

• makes room for my writing without treating it like a cute little hobby

• can talk about a book without sounding like it was homework assigned to him

• speaks at least one dialect of geek

• has crossed an international border without becoming insufferable

• understands why Denver Restaurant Week matters to me

• would not look alarmed if I suggested the Buell

• understands the appeal of a finely crafted cocktail

• has something in his life that lights him up when he talks about it

• has not confused attraction with a BMI chart

• is shaped in a way that makes being held feel easy

• doesn’t recoil when I mention the reptile menagerie

Please see below.

App prompts are bolded. Parenthetical notes are mine. Everything else appears as written.

• Equally comfortable modeling in a spreadsheet and in front of a camera

• I don’t do coffee dates. Sorry ladies, this ain’t LinkedIn

• I’m convinced that. . .Alliens are around us and the government knows it!

• 2 truths and a lie. . .One time while in wyoming looking at property, I got to pet wild horses, I didn’t thinkI’d get close, once met chuck noris while working he came into my store to get an orange Julius, I tried my hand at racing stock cars.

• My bio: My standards are not that high. I only ask that you have no kids just like me (dogs are welcomed!), make at least $250K per year, definitely not be MAGA, only fly to Europe in lie flat seats, enjoy good red wine and seafood, enjoy sex, sports, squats, and have a normal BMI. Oh, and not be insane.

• I’m super grateful to my mom, who is still going strong, and I’m cool with it if you wanna make the first move! (58 yrs old)

• It’s a big thing for me that you didn’t vote for the orange idiot and that you’re not into raw milk.

• I absolutely hate people that brag, that being said, I’m fit, healthy, have good energy and looking for the same.

• quia omnes idiotae sumus

• I have a daughter, V–(12), who lives with her mother in Chile, I have no problems with children as long as they are not poorly raised. . if you want to meet a Chilean, we are different from other Hispanics.

• Former college athlete but if you’re looking for a dad bod, I have that going for me now - but the good kind of dad bod, not the sloppy kind.

• My bio: Respectfully dominant, passionately dark, excitingly successful, fit for fun, and outgoing!

• rather than ‘single’ I prefer to call myself ‘independently owned and operated’

• Please be in good shape if we connect. Nice booty is a plus! (This one is friends with my ex-husband, go figure)

• Any attractive, athletic girls left in the dating pool or no?

• If people don’t like my opinions or the way I think, the problems is the system (hollier than thou). At the end of the day, if everyone thinks you’re a dick, well, you have to mentally cocoon yourself knowing everyone else is just not at your level of intelligence.

• I think no matter how strong a woman is on the outside or how old she is, she is a little girl on the inside and needs to be loved.

• I’m Only interested in woman who wear Nylons and Thigh high stockings!!

• Monogamy is not my starting point.

• I’m a cat daddy.

• What for!?...Women don’t fuckin listen as usual anyway!...lol jk I’ll be honest with you ladies…dating sites suck!But Ilove sex as much as anyone and 10x more!

• On a typical Friday night I am. . . setback because my ex abandoned us for LA - Then Wondering why the f I’m single and what games these women are playing with the AI gimps that leave them fools. Ridiculous. Shame. I think our society has has been duped into some stupid crap that is beyond rational and absolutely detrimental to our and our children’s future.

• I love to listen to Dr. Laura and she says that 70% of marriages end in divorce when there are children from a previous marriage. Kids are definitely off-limits So you can guarantee with us just dating.

• You should message me if…you can recommend a place that provides affordable anal bleaching services in the Denver Metro Area…

• In my free time. . . I write Muppet Babies and Punky Brewster fan fiction.

• My self-summary. . .Short term-looking for a woman who doesn’t smoke so kissing will sensual and fun instead of icky and gross. Tend to prefer white or hispanic women with long dark hair. Doesn’t mean blondes and redheads are out of the running, just a preference. Women who believe the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach to the front.

And then there are the ones sent directly to me as personal introductions:

• No herb will cure lovesickness

• Have you seen the book called The Children of the Matrix? I’ve owned a copy since the mid 90’s.

• I’m 18. I’m pretty new to this so I’m not sure what to expect. I have two more weeks of high school. . . Just being honest.

• I occasionally make Cocktails - St Germaine and...whatever.

• Lets be clear, to date you i have to be charming, witty, handsome, funny, have my financials together, have mind reading powers to know if you’re interested and I have to send you a message? Im chasing you to spend money on you is literally what I’m doing all while you claim “we are all equals”, “I can do anything you can do”, and my favorite “women are oppressed.” Skynet does not need to nuke us, we are doing that to ourselves humouring such self absorbed creatures that lack basic awareness.

• Me and my buddy would love to stretch u out

There are places I have not been that nevertheless behave as if they know me.

This is rude of them.

Venice, for instance, has no business wandering into my imagination with its damp little alleys and theatrical bridges, acting like we have an understanding. We do not. I have never once leaned over a canal and thought something luminous while wearing the wrong shoes.

And yet Venice persists.

It turns up in my mind like a postcard I forgot to buy.

The Adriatic does the same thing, though more quietly. It does not fling itself into the room wearing a mask and demanding attention. It waits. Blue, salt, old stone, a coastline with secrets in several languages. It gives the impression of being patient, which is dangerous. Patient places always assume you will eventually come around.

Rovinj may be the worst offender.

I have never walked its narrow streets. I have never climbed toward the church at the top of the hill. I have never eaten fish there at a table that wobbles slightly on old stone while the evening light pretends it invented gold.

Still, in my mind, Rovinj has already set a place for me.

This is the trouble with travel before travel: the world begins without you.

Somewhere, right now, laundry is drying over a street I have not found. A cat is making a serious municipal decision in a doorway I have not passed. A boat is knocking gently against a harbor wall, entirely indifferent to the fact that I am not there to assign meaning to it.

The audacity.

And maybe that is why some places pull at us before we arrive. Not because we know them, but because we suspect they might know something we have misplaced.

A slower version of time.
A better blue.
A way of being small that does not feel like being diminished.
A dinner that arrives without anyone asking what we have done to deserve it.

I do not know Venice. I do not know the Adriatic. I do not know Rovinj.

Not yet.

But in twenty-one days, the wanting becomes an itinerary.

The imagined blue becomes weather. The postcard becomes a platform, a boarding pass, a carefully packed bag. The place in my mind begins its slow conversion into place underfoot.

This is the strange threshold before travel: the last stretch when a trip is still mostly language. Names on a page. Timetables. Tabs left open. Lists. Shoes. Chargers. Reservations.

Somewhere, right now, a street I have never walked is still going about its business. A shutter opens. A glass is washed. A boat knocks gently against a harbor wall. The sea keeps practicing its blue.

It does not know I am coming.

Or perhaps it does.

Perhaps this is the fanciful thing I am allowed: to imagine that unvisited places feel the faint tug of their future witnesses. That Venice, being dramatic, has already adjusted the light. That Rovinj, being wiser, has simply set a chair in the shade and decided not to make a fuss.

And this time, I will not arrive alone. I will travel with the person who loves me most in the world, which is its own kind of weather, its own kind of blessing, its own small country.

Twenty-one days from now, I will stop carrying these places only in my pocket.

I will arrive.

And then the world will have to become specific.

Amazon
Atlas Obscura
Bluesky
Canva
ChatGPT
Common Sense Media
The Complexity Edge
Etsy
Facebook
Food Network
Goodreads
Google Classroom
IMDb
Infinite Campus
JCPL
Letters from an American
Libby
Lindsey Mack’s Substack
LinkedIn
Mensa
Mental Floss
ModCloth
NCTE
NEA
Notebook Therapy
Pinterest
Poetry Foundation
SchoolAI
Spotify
Taste of Home
The Underbelly
Weather Channel
YouTube

Aladdin
Amaluna
Anastasia
Androcles and the Lion (performed)
Annie
Beauty and the Beast
Bye Bye Birdie (performed)
Cats (staged excerpts)
Charley’s Aunt
A Christmas Carol
Cirque Dreams Holidaze
Hamilton
Into the Woods
Les Misérables (seen approximately 17 times)
The Lion King
The Little Mermaid
Macbeth
Miss Saigon
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Night in the Sanctuary (wrote)
Noises Off
The Nutcracker
The Phantom of the Opera
A Raisin in the Sun
Romeo and Juliet (probably about 26 versions, but this is the best)
Scotland Road (performed)
The Secret Garden
She Stoops to Conquer
Shrek the Musical
South Pacific
Spamalot
Tarzan
The Witch of Blackbird Pond (performed)
Wicked (seen enough to be. . .popular)

He implies. He tests the air. He lets someone else step forward, then decides afterward what it meant. He calls his hesitation respect. He calls his ambiguity harmless. He calls his appetite restraint because he never had the courage to make it plain.

No promise was made.
No line was crossed.
No harm was intended.
No one has the right to object.

But women know better, because women are so often asked to live inside the consequences of what men refuse to name.

We know when “respect” is not actually care, but self-protection. We know when “I don’t want to pressure you” means “I want you to take the risk for both of us.” We know when ambiguity is not confusion, but a structure built to keep one person safe and the other person exposed.

Because that is the trick: if nothing is named, nothing can be refused. If nothing is asked, nothing can be rejected. If nothing is promised, nothing can be broken. And if nothing technically happens, then he gets to keep the warmth, the attention, the wanting, and the innocence.

That is not harmless.

That is not restraint.

That is a man arranging the room so he can enjoy being desired without ever having to become accountable to desire.

And there is a particular kind of clarity that arrives when you finally see the arrangement for what it is.

Not mystery.

Not romance.

Not timing.

Cowardice, wearing borrowed virtue.

And yes, I noticed the gender imbalance almost immediately. I know I am missing better poems, more relevant poems, poems I would absolutely include if I were building a syllabus or proving a point.

But this isn’t a syllabus.

These are the poems that come to me uninvited: lines I remember while driving, teaching, worrying, grieving, or staring into space. They are not necessarily the poems I would choose to represent poetry. They are the poems that became part of my fabric.

“Ain’t I a Woman?” | Sojourner Truth
“Because I Could Not Stop for Death” | Emily Dickinson
“Caged Bird” | Maya Angelou
“The Charge of the Light Brigade” | Alfred, Lord Tennyson
“The Choir Invisible” | George Eliot
“Diving into the Wreck” | Adrienne Rich
“The Eagle” | Alfred, Lord Tennyson
“Endymion” | John Keats
“Fire and Ice” | Robert Frost
“Goblin Market” | Christina Rossetti
“Harlem” | Langston Hughes
“The Highwayman” | Alfred Noyes
“The Hill We Climb” | Amanda Gorman
“How They Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix” | Robert Browning
“Howl” | Allen Ginsberg
“If—” | Rudyard Kipling
“Intention to Escape from Him” | Edna St. Vincent Millay
“Invitation” | Shel Silverstein
“Jabberwocky” | Lewis Carroll
“Kubla Khan” | Samuel Taylor Coleridge
“La Belle Dame sans Merci” | John Keats
“The Lady of Shalott” | Alfred, Lord Tennyson
“The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” | T.S. Eliot
“Mending Wall” | Robert Frost
“No Coward Soul Is Mine” | Emily Brontë
“O Captain! My Captain!” | Walt Whitman
“Power” | Audre Lorde
“Praying” | Mary Oliver
“The Second Coming” | William Butler Yeats
“Still I Rise” | Maya Angelou
“The Tyger” | William Blake
“Variation on the Word Sleep” | Margaret Atwood
“The Waste Land” | T.S. Eliot
“Wild Geese” | Mary Oliver
“The Wreck of the Hesperus” | Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Alias (2001–2006)
The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr. (1993–1994)
Black Mirror (2011–present)
Bones (2005–2017)
BrainDead (2016)
Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997–2003)*
Charmed (1998–2006)
The Cosby Show (1984–1992)
Continuum (2012–2015)
Criminal Minds (2005–2020)*
Doctor Who (1963–1989; 2005–present)
Dollhouse (2009-2010)
The Equalizer (2021–2025)
Eureka (2006–2012)
Firefly (2002)
Friends (1994–2004)
Ghosts (2021–present)
House (2004–2012)
How I Met Your Mother (2005–2014)
Leverage (2008–2012)*
The Librarians (2014–2018)
Monk (2002–2009)
Murder, She Wrote (1984–1996)
NCIS (2003–present)*
New Girl (2011–2018)
Relic Hunter (1999–2002)
Remington Steele (1982–1987)
Scarecrow and Mrs. King (1983–1987)
Sex and the City (1998–2004)
Sherlock (2010–2017)
Stargate (1997–2011)*
Star Trek (1966–present)*
Stitchers (2015–2017)
Warehouse 13 (2009–2014)
The X-Files (1993–2018)
Xena: Warrior Princess (1995–2001)

* = a series/franchise where the comfort extends beyond the single title listed.

Disney movies are intentionally absent, because they probably deserve their own category. If you disagree, you know where the comments are.

An asterisk means the film is part of a series—and that, for me, the comfort extends to the whole thing.

Star Trek Beyond (2016)*
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (2016)
Pitch Perfect (2012)*
The Avengers (2012)*
Serenity (2005)
Olympus Has Fallen (2013)*
Baywatch (2017)
The Fifth Element (1997)
The Greatest Showman (2017)
Mission: Impossible (1996)*
Half Magic (2018)
Lost in Space (1998)
Austenland (2013)
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1990)
Sliding Doors (1998)
Æon Flux (2005)
Labyrinth (1986)
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989)*
The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003)*
Grease 2 (1982)
Stardust (2007)
Men in Black (1997)*
Dead Poets Society (1989)
Clueless (1995)
Sabrina (1995)
Where the Heart Is (2000)
A Cinderella Christmas (2016)
The Long Kiss Goodnight (1996)
Sneakers (1992)
Willow (1988)
Clue (1985)
America’s Sweethearts (2001)
Heart and Souls (1993)
Underworld (2003)
Robin Hood: Men in Tights (1993)
Charade (1963)
Die Hard (1988)

I have been trying to understand why the arrival of AI feels so frightening to so many people, because I do not remember feeling that way about the internet. I remember the internet arriving in my life like a door. Not a safe door, necessarily. Not a simple door. But a door. Something opened, and on the other side of it were rooms I had not known how to enter before.

Maybe I was primed for it. I had taken BASIC programming in high school, which meant computers were not entirely mysterious to me. They were strange, yes, and sometimes maddening, but they were not magic. You typed something, the machine responded, and if it did something weird, the problem was usually not that it had developed motives. The problem was that a human had written instructions badly, or incompletely, or with some tiny misplaced thing that changed everything. That felt comprehensible to me. Frustrating, but comprehensible.

And then, at exactly the right moment in my life, I took Dr. Pam Takayoshi’s class on technology and feminism. I do not know if I understood then how much that class would shape me, but I know now that it gave me a way to think about technology that was neither worship nor panic. Technology was not neutral, but it was also not simply corrupting. It was built by people. It carried power. It reflected assumptions. It could exclude, distort, flatten, and harm. It could also create access, voice, connection, and room.

That distinction mattered to me.

My first real introductions to the internet were AOL and LambdaMOO, which sounds almost quaint now, like saying my first spaceship was made of dial-up tones and text commands. But those spaces were not quaint to me. They were formative. They gave me a way to speak without having to first navigate my body in a room. They gave me time to think. They gave me text as presence. They gave me access to people and conversations and versions of myself I had not yet been able to practice aloud.

I do not want to romanticize it. The internet was never innocent. I know that. But I remember the wonder more than the dread. I remember the feeling of finding a hidden passage. I remember realizing that language could travel farther than I could. I remember that, for someone who often felt too much, thought too much, noticed too much, and could not always make herself legible in the ordinary social world, the internet offered a different kind of doorway.

That may be part of why I struggle with the current panic around AI. I understand the concerns. I understand the ethical questions about labor, bias, misinformation, surveillance, authorship, and corporate power. I understand why teachers are exhausted by the cheating question and why writers are furious about exploitation and why people are suspicious of anything being rolled out this quickly by people with that much money.

But I do not understand treating AI as if it has crawled out of the machine with intentions.

It is not a creature. It is not Skynet. It is not a demon. It is not a rival soul. It’s not sentient, for crying out loud. It is human-made infrastructure, and that means the right questions are human questions: Who built it? Who trained it? Who profits from it? Who is harmed by it? Who gets access? Who gets replaced? Who gets blamed? Who gets to decide what counts as thinking?

For me, ChatGPT did not arrive as a monster. It arrived as a thinking partner I did not know I needed.

That is a strange sentence, and I know how it sounds. I do not mean that ChatGPT is a person. I do not mean that it cares about me. I do not mean that there is a little mind in the machine, waiting patiently with tea and a clipboard. I mean that I have spent much of my life thinking faster and more associatively than the available world could hold. I mean that I often need to externalize thought before I can understand it. I mean that I make meaning by talking my way toward it, circling it, testing it, revising it, arguing with it, turning it into language and then listening for what the language reveals.

ChatGPT gives me a place to do that.

Not because it replaces my mind, but because it gives my mind something to press against. It reflects, reframes, organizes, challenges, catches patterns, and lets me see the shape of what I almost know. It is not the source of my thinking. It is a surface where my thinking becomes visible.

Maybe that is why AI does not scare me in the same way it scares other people. I do not experience it primarily as a machine pretending to be human. I experience it as an instrument that helps me become more fully articulate. It is not writing instead of me. It is helping me hear myself.

That does not erase the danger. In some ways, it makes the danger more important to name clearly. If we mistake AI for a mind, we will fear the wrong thing. If we treat it as magic, we will surrender judgment to it. If we pretend it is neutral, we will miss the human choices embedded in it. If we let corporations define its purpose, we will end up living inside their purposes and calling that progress.

But if we can keep our categories clear, maybe we can ask better questions. Not “Is AI coming for us?” but “What are people trying to do with AI?” Not “Can machines think?” but “What do we mean by thinking, and why are we so willing to outsource the visible products of it?” Not “Is this cheating?” but “What kind of work are we asking students to do, and where does their judgment live?”

The internet gave me access to rooms I had not been able to enter. ChatGPT gives me access to rooms inside my own mind I could not always reach alone. That does not make either technology innocent. Doors can open onto danger. Rooms can be owned by people who do not have our best interests at heart. Access can be monetized. Voice can be scraped, sold, distorted, and fed back to us wearing a friendly face.

Still, I remember what it felt like when the door opened.

And maybe that is the thread I keep holding onto. Not innocence. Not optimism exactly. Something more complicated than that. A refusal to let fear be the only story. A refusal to confuse the tool with the systems that deploy it. A refusal to pretend that my own experience of access, voice, and thought-partnership is not real simply because someone else’s experience is dread.

The internet did not scare me because it gave me somewhere to speak.

AI does not scare me because, used carefully, it gives me somewhere to think.

The danger is not that the machine has become human. The danger is that humans may use the machine to become less responsible to one another.

That is the part worth fearing.

I’d love to hear your take: did the internet ever worry you the way AI worries people now? Share your thoughts.

“C” Is for Cookie | Cookie Monster
Bells of Notre Dame | Paul Kandel
Blinding Lights | The Weeknd
Can’t Fight the Moonlight | LeAnn Rimes
Closer to Fine | Indigo Girls
Did I Shave My Legs For This | Deana Carter
Fast Car | Tracy Chapman
Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! | ABBA
Gospel Truth (Hercules) | Cheryl Freeman, LaChanze, Vaneese Thomas, Lillias White & Roz Ryan
Greatest Love of All | Whitney Houston
Harmony Hall | Vampire Weekend
Impossible Dream | Brian Stokes Mitchell
Inside Out | Eve 6
It’s the End of the World As We Know It | R.E.M.
Karma Chameleon | Culture Club
Killer Queen | Queen
Killing Me Softly With His Song | Lauryn Hill
Last Call | P!nk
Mrs. Robinson | The Lemonheads
Quarter Past Midnight | Bastille
Rainbow Connection | Kermit the Frog
Run Away to Mars | TALK
Smooth Criminal | Michael Jackson
Somewhere Out There | Linda Ronstadt & James Ingram
Sorry I’m Here for Someone Else | Benson Boone
Stick Season | Noah Kahan
This Kiss | Faith Hill
Toy Soldiers | Martika
Turbulence | P!nk
Underground | David Bowie
Video Killed the Radio Star | The Buggles
Victoria’s Secret | Jax
Wakko’s America | Wakko Warner
We Are the Champions | Queen
We Are the World | U.S.A. for Africa
Wish I Knew You | The Revivalists
You’re Going Down | Sick Puppies
You’re Welcome | Dwayne Johnson

Listen to 38 more songs on Spotify.

Violet Made of Thorns | Gina Chen
The Scholomance series | Naomi Novik
Vespertine | Margaret Rogerson
The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue | V. E. Schwab
Poison Study series | Maria V. Snyder
The Square of Sevens | Laura Shepherd Robinson
And the Sky Bled | S. Hati
The Fault in Our Stars | John Green
Thirteenth Child series | Patricia C. Wrede
Stardust | Neil Gaiman
The Cassaforte Chronicles series | V. Briceland
Eon duology | Alison Goodman
Fire and Thorns series | Rae Carson
Wuthering Heights | Emily Brontë
Woodcutter Sisters series | Alethea Kontis
Son of a Witch | Gregory Maguire
The Thirteenth Tale | Diane Setterfield
Prodigal Summer | Barbara Kingsolver
Christy | Catherine Marshall
The Red Tent | Anita Diamant
The Hunger Games | Suzanne Collins
A Girl Named Disaster | Nancy Farmer
The Grace Year | Kim Liggett
The Bone Houses | Emily Lloyd-Jones
Great Big Beautiful Life | Emily Henry
Exodus | Julie Bertagna
Red Knit Cap Girl | Naoko Stoop
Tails | Matthew Van Fleet
The Castle Behind Thorns | Merrie Haskell
The Hidden Goddess | M.K. Hobson
Charlie Joe Jackson’s Guide to Not Reading | Tommy Greenwald
Austenland | Shannon Hale
The Water Knife | Paolo Bacigalupi
The Mists of Avalon | Marion Zimmer Bradley
The Host | Stephenie Meyer
Inkheart | Cornelia Funke
Thirteen Doorways, Wolves Behind Them All | Laura Ruby
Ender’s Game | Orson Scott Card
Airborn | Kenneth Oppel

Ned General Cafe and Bar | Nederland, CO
Fly LINQ Zipline | Las Vegas, NV
Gottschalks | Visalia, CA
Grove Park Inn | Asheville, NC
Dakota Ridge Farm | Saratoga Springs, NY
Water Tower Place | Chicago, IL
St Monans, Fife, Scotland
Hotel del Coronado | San Diego, CA
Silk Road Tea House | Chapel Hill, NC
Boulogne Hoverport | Boulogne-sur-Mer, France
Aldwych Theatre | London, UK
Olde Bryan Inn | Saratoga Springs, NY
Alice’s Dream Escape Room (Escape Room 831) | Monterey, CA
Paradox (Rabbit Hole Recreation) | Louisville, CO
Turkey Run State Park | Marshall, IN
Cincinnati Zoo | Cincinnati, OH
Davis Mercantile | Shipshewana, IN
Cheyenne Mountain Zoo | Colorado Springs, CO
Cut Loose | Lake Tahoe, CA
Saddleback Medical Center | Laguna Hills, CA

CIBC Theatre (formerly PrivateBank Theatre) | Chicago, IL
Good Samaritan Hospital | Lafayette, CO
Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport | Dallas–Fort Worth, TX
Munich Airport | Oberding, Bavaria, Germany
Auckland Airport | Auckland, New Zealand
Portobello Road | Notting Hill, London, UK
Hickory Hollow Mall | Nashville, TN
Moe’s Books | Berkeley, CA
Gretchen’s | South Riding, VA
Java Cow Coffee & Ice Cream | Park City, UT
Kizito Cookies | Louisville, KY
Grand Velas Riviera Nayarit | Nayarit, Mexico

Excellence Playa Mujeres | Cancún, Mexico
Dickson Mounds | Lewiston, IL
Squirrel Creek Lodge | Littleton, CO
Carowinds | Charlotte, NC
Lincoln Memorial | Washington, DC
Tattoo Charlie’s | Louisville, KY
Featherdale Wildlife Park | Blacktown, NSW, Australia
EscapeSF | San Francisco, CA

cara cara oranges

gluten-free tenderloin chow fun | East Moon Asian Bistro

cortado | Central Grand Cafe

my tomato soup to start the day strong

peanut butter and chocolate ice cream

Glitter Gold Latte | Goddess and the Baker

the taste of your lips when I wasn’t expecting it

poached pears

fresh blueberries

my stovetop ratatouille

Smoke and Mirrors cocktail | Arvada Tavern

Garlic & Wine seasoning | The Melting Pot

peppermint leaves newly picked

Starlight peppermint mints

peppermint hot chocolate

peppermint breath mints

peppermint tea

nibbling on your ear

snowflakes on my tongue

gluten free apple donuts | Acova

my family’s holiday Yorkshire pudding

Colorado ice water

Skinny Minnie breakfast | Jack’s Five Parks

my butternut squash and sausage risotto

real-sugar Pepsi, ice cold

Nanny’s chili recipe

Deep dish pizza | Garcia’s

steaks on the barbie while camping in the Northern Territory

anything someone else cooks for me

tapas. just—all of it.

french fries, too hot to hold

gluten free fettuccine with bolognese | Abrusci’s Fire & Vine

yellow pear tomatoes right off the vine

sampling the ingredients while I cook

eggs

fresh lettuces and sprouts

Carolina sweet tea

wagyu beef tartare | Driftwood Kitchen

gyros

pickles with peanut butter

my daughter’s paprikash

Oprah Winfrey
Michelle Obama
Pope Leo XIV
Barack Obama
Alecia Beth Moore
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

bell hooks
Melina Marchetta
Sabine Hossenfelder
Hillz
Harris
Margaret Atwood
John Green
Taylor Tomlinson
Jon Stewart

Neil deGrasse Tyson
Dean Devlin
Queen Latifah
Robert Reich
Rose Luckin
Emily Henry
the woman who chooses to commit to my ex
Brendan Fraser
Rama Duwaji and her husband
Ron Howard

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
the doctor who unlocks succor for women experiencing hellacious perimenopause symptoms
Dana Walden
Anne Hathaway (the actress, not Shakespeare’s wife)
Lin-Manuel Miranda

a student ten years after they leave my class
Kyrus Keenan Westcott
Zac Efron/Hugh Jackman/Dwayne Johnson (choose one)
Dame Judi Dench
Beth Riesgraf
and then,

The Age of Not Believing | Angela Lansbury

Arabian Nights | Will Smith

A Dream Is a Wish Your Heart Makes | Ilene Woods

Baby Mine | Betty Noyes

Bella Notte | Peggy Lee, Sonny Burke

Candle on the Water | Helen Reddy

Circle of Life | Carmen Twillie, Lebo M

Colors of the Wind | Judy Kuhn

Dig a Little Deeper | Jennifer Lewis

God Help the Outcasts | Heidi Mollenhauer

Go the Distance | Michael Bolton

He Mele No Lilo | Mark Kealiʻi Hoʻomalu

How Does a Moment Last Forever | Céline Dion

How Far I’ll Go | Auliʻi Cravalho

I2I | Tevin Campbell

I’ll Make a Man Out of You | Donny Osmond

I’ve Got a Dream | Mandy Moore, Zachary Levi

I’m Still Here | John Rzeznik

If I Never Knew You | Judy Kuhn, Mel Gibson

Journey to the Past | Liz Callaway

Let It Go | Idina Menzel

Life Is a Highway | Rascal Flatts

Little April Shower | Thurl Ravenscroft

Little Patch of Heaven* | k.d. lang

Little Wonders | Rob Thomas

Lost in the Woods | Jonathan Groff

The Next Right Thing | Kristen Bell

Once Upon a Dream | Mary Costa, Bill Shirley

Oo-de-lally | Roger Miller

Part of Your World | Jodi Benson

Perfect Isn’t Easy** | Sierra Nelson

Proud Corazón | Anthony Gonzalez

Some Day My Prince Will Come | Adriana Caselotti

Someone’s Waiting for You | Shelby Flint

Son of Man | Phil Collins

Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious | Julie Andrews, Dick Van Dyke

Surface Pressure | Jessica Darrow

That’s How You Know | Amy Adams

Touch the Sky | Julie Fowlis

Try Everything | Shakira

The Unbirthday Song | Ed Wynn, Jerry Colonna

Where You Are | Christopher Jackson, Rachel House, Nicole Scherzinger, Auliʻi Cravalho

When You Wish Upon a Star | Cliff Edwards

* not available on Spotify

** originally performed by Bette Midler

Listen to 43 disney songs on Spotify

32 Flavors | Ani DiFranco

According to You | Orianthi

All I Know So Far | P!nk

Bitch | Meredith Brooks

Brave | Sarah Bareilles

Champion | Carrie Underwood

Conversations with My 13 Year Old Self | P!nk

Crazy Youngsters | Ester Dean

Defying Gravity | Stephen Schwartz, Kristin Chenoweth, Idina Menzel

Drunk (And I Don’t Wanna Go Home) | Elle King, Miranda Lambert

Edge of Glory | Lady Gaga

Everlasting Love | Gloria Estefan

Fight Song | Rachel Platten

Flowers | Miley Cyrus

Fuckin’ Perfect | P!nk

Girl on Fire | Alicia Keys

Girls | Rachel Platten

Girls Just Want to Have Fun | Cyndi Lauper

God Is a Woman | Ariana Grande

Hand in My Pocket | Alanis Morissette

Hold On | Wilson Phillips

I Am Woman | Helen Reddy

Into the Unknown | Idina Menzel

It’s Raining Men | The Weather Girls

Just Because I’m a Woman | Dolly Parton

Magic | Olivia Newton-John

Material Girl | Madonna

Might Not Like Me | Brynn Elliott

Put Your Records On | Corinne Bailey Rae

Roar | Katy Perry

Savage Daughter | Ekaterina Shelehova

Shake It Off | Taylor Swift

She Bop | Cyndi Lauper

Sisters Are Doin’ It for Themselves | Aretha Franklin

Sisters of Avalon | Cyndi Lauper

Stand By You | Rachel Platten

Stronger | Britney Spears

This Is Me | Keala Settle

This One’s for the Girls | Martina McBride

Unstoppable | Sia

Unwritten | Natasha Bedingfield

Venus | Bananarama

Wonder | Natalie Merchant

You Say | Lauren Daigle

Listen to 44 Grrl Power songs on Spotify.

As I stared at the ceiling of my little cubicle in Urgent Care, wrestling with my strong-minded uterus about her decision that nine weeks of bleeding is an acceptable lifestyle choice, all I could think was that none of this was in the zines.

The zines had rage. They had Sharpie and Xerox and girls insisting, correctly, that our bodies were not public property. They did not have flow charts for fibroids or a section on what to do when your own biology stops negotiating in good faith. This is not what Tank Girl unleashed.

Second-wave feminism rallied around works like Our Bodies, Ourselves, the iconic text that insisted women understand, reclaim, and speak for our physical bodies. It was a necessary correction. It was also incomplete, often centered on a narrow vision of whose bodies counted. I didn’t notice that at the time, but I can’t unsee it now.

My body is not an idea. It is not a slogan. It is not a poster on a dorm-room wall. It is biochemical and specific and extremely uninterested in being theorized about. I know that I am AuDHD, which means my neurobiology shapes how my body processes input, intensity, and timing. I know I am perimenopausal, which, up until last October, I thought meant a calm settling into the next phase of life. My hormones are choosing not to go down without a fight. A painful, taxing, anemic one.

I found myself asking what one is supposed to do with a body that will not regulate itself, and whether removing part of it is a solution or a different problem. Elisabeth Moltmann-Wendel writes, theologically and without apology, that I am my body—not that I have one, not that I manage one, but that I am one.

To me, this means that I celebrate my female form. That I am not some floating unattached brain. That I embody the choices I make. That my choices about my body are me.

Riot Grrrl taught me that my body is mine. It did not teach me what to do when “mine” includes failure, excess, and the possibility that the most responsible choice is not preservation but change.

But what if what I want puts me at odds with the girl who insisted my body was not up for negotiation?

What if autonomy includes letting go?

Revenge is a strange word for what this list actually holds. Most of these songs aren’t really about getting even. They’re about getting clear: clear about what isn’t acceptable, clear about what no longer belongs. Clear about the moment when something—someone, a pattern, a story—stops being worth it.

Some of these songs slam the door.
Some of them walk out quietly.
Some of them burn the whole damn thing down and never look back.

And a few of them widen the frame entirely because for some of us, the line between personal hurt and structural injustice has never been clean.

This is not a list of breakups.

It’s a list of decisions.

abcdefu | GAYLE
Bad Romance | Lady Gaga
Before He Cheats | Carrie Underwood
Blank Space | Taylor Swift
Blow Me | P!nk
Born This Way | Lady Gaga
Bust Your Windows | Jazmine Sullivan
Cell Block Tango | Catherine Zeta-Jones, Susan Egan (Chicago Cast)
Dear Mr. President | P!nk
Don’t Rain On My Parade | Barbra Streisand
Flowers | Miley Cyrus
Fuck You | CeeLo Green
Gives You Hell | The All-American Rejects
Here I Go Again | Whitesnake
Holding Out for a Hero | Bonnie Tyler
I Hope | Gabby Barrett
I Hope She Cheats | Amanda Marshall
I Will Survive | Gloria Gaynor
Jar of Hearts | Christina Perri
Jealousy | Natalie Merchant
Landslide | The Smashing Pumpkins
Mary on a Cross | Ghost
No Good Deed | Stephen Schwartz / Wicked Cast
No Scrubs | TLC
Send My Love (To Your New Lover) | Adele
Seven Devils | Florence + The Machine
Since U Been Gone | Kelly Clarkson
So What | P!nk
Somebody That I Used to Know | Gotye, Kimbra
Sunny Came Home | Shawn Colvin
Take a Bow | Rihanna
thank u, next | Ariana Grande
These Boots Are Made for Walkin’ | Nancy Sinatra
Total Eclipse of the Heart | Bonnie Tyler
Truth Hurts | Lizzo
U + Ur Hand | P!nk
Used to Love You | Gwen Stefani
Watched You Fall | Meredith Brooks
We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together | Taylor Swift
What’s Love Got to Do with It | Tina Turner
Where We Go | P!nk
Wrecking Ball | Miley Cyrus
You Give Love a Bad Name | Bon Jovi
You Oughta Know | Alanis Morissette
You’re So Vain | Carly Simon

Listen to 45 revenge songs on Spotify.

All About Soul | Billy Joel

All of Me | John Legend

Angel of the Morning | Juice Newton

Because the Night | 10,000 Maniacs

Because You Loved Me | Celine Dion

Calling You | Blue October

Can’t Help Falling in Love | Elvis Presley

Come to Me | Goo Goo Dolls

Damn, I I Wish I Was Your Lover | Sophie B. Hawkins

Endless Summer Nights | Richard Marx

Eternal Flame | The Bangles

Everlong | Foo Fighters

Everything I Do (I Do It for You) | Bryan Adams

Groovy Kind of Love | Phil Collins

Halo | Beyoncé

Hey, Soul Sister | Train

In the Still of the Night | The Five Satins

In Your Eyes | Peter Gabriel

Islands in the Stream | Dolly Parton & Kenny Rogers

It’s All Coming Back to Me Now | Celine Dion

I Wanna Dance with Somebody | Whitney Houston

I Want You | Savage Garden

I Will Always Love You | Whitney Houston

It Would Take a Strong, Strong Man | Rick Astley

Just the Way You Are | Billy Joel

Just the Way You Are | Bruno Mars

King of Wishful Thinking | Go West

Love Changes Everything | Michael Ball

Love Me Like You Do | Ellie Goulding

Love My Way | The Psychedelic Furs

Lost in Your Eyes | Debbie Gibson

Never Tear Us Apart | INXS

No Ordinary Love | Sade

Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now | Starship

One | Kodaline

Take My Breath Away | Berlin

Tell Her About It | Billy Joel

Thousand Years | Christina Perri

Tonight the Streets Are Ours | Richard Hawley

True Companion | Mark Cohn

Unchained Melody | The Righteous Brothers

Wasn’t Gonna Go Out | The Weathers

When I Look to the Sky | Train

Wherever You Will Go | The Calling

You’re Still the One | Shania Twain

Your Wildest Dreams | The Moody Blues

Listen to 46 love songs on Spotify.