How to kick-box my way out of an archetype by Samantha Duncan Lyrics

the way Buffy Summers unstuck herself
from paper doll sweaters and the sticky male narrative cloak.
Bookish on the seventh day of the week, brilliant on the eighth.
But all I take in is the heel to countless abdomens,
the magic of her battle-resistant hair. Sometimes, I’m happy
to be floating exotic in a cup of male gaze
and off the school bus daze, where girls ridiculed
through their sunflower blonde sheets of rain hair
and white boys with natural red lips ignored me.
Dark and cinnamon stick-thin, I broke often,
but made sure my first adult purchase was combat
boots and a stake I keep close to the heart,
for my part as an extra in that third-wave finale