Staring at the mirror is the bull run. It’s a guerilla conversation. That Sicilian goddess that caught your attention doesn’t look at you back. You see an acne-ridden complexion, eye bags that carry grievances with reality. Dimples on your thighs turn into valleys of worry. Situational resentment feeds your troops—they’re fighting with bare hands. Bruised and calloused, your image lies in their palms.

Heading out the door, the cheap bra that digs into your skin permeates your mind. The project needs feedback before the draft’s deadline. Your manager seems to notice the urgency. Sagging breasts propel the priority. The apple doesn’t fall far from the phallic tree. Your back hurts from the harvest. That’s a guerilla conversation.

It was a beautiful midday scene—the lunchtime daydream. You peer out the gape of your greenhouse, overlooking those broad pastures while painting a lone cow. You’re faceless with a smile. The rolling hills turn into skyscrapers, and you miss the view. This concrete jungle is verily a desert where the man wins, and the struggle of polarization is ongoing. The cavalries that life offers extend beyond that wakeful examination and powerless standoff with a posting schedule. It’s a guerilla conversation with the monitor, the change in your wallet, and even the grout in the brick.

You know you left something behind. Exiting work, you’re fumbling for a mask separating the feeling from the air. Forgetting the mandate is long gone—it’s a silly mistake, seeing as how time blends. The world remains unchanged, and you miss the mask. It was a simple protection, but nothing’s simple in guerilla warfare.

Maybe you would glide through your days and have better offense with a shield of some sort. Maybe the Guerilla Girls had it right. The role of an unnamed feminist vigilante gets comfortable, situated in the lush seating of the mind’s command center. Somehow, the elevator slows, and the floors pass by in stern quietude. The chair turns to dust.

You’ve made it to the lobby, and you mull over the assumptions. They’re steep considerations in unfair combat. Existing at bay, it’s the guerilla conversation.

There’s a new tactic gasping for air. The conclusion is that it doesn’t have to be words: it’s in the actions. Historically, actions speak louder, and clocking out isn’t the end of the present agenda. You choose to suit up in your armor and ditch the handheld pacifier married to self-retaliation. The nature of this disparity of power is unpredictable. One day our soldiers line up in full gear, but it’s the brevity of vigor that claims them. The next day, everyone’s late to stations, and somehow a new strategy is developed that saves the feminine. In a different world, there’s a mediator coming into the medic tent, injecting intersectionality and a bipartisan release of egoic pressure.

The war maintains velocity unwaveringly. The nurses are weak from the long hours, and the unfortunate enemies are blinded by residual smoke from their cannons. Testosterone and patriarchal sympathies are gunners at the ready to light the next fuse. Our waning patience and tolerance are the corporal to the commander, watching ever so closely the trajectory.

To what degree are our leaders visible on enemy lines? We yearn for voices while across the field they itch to fill the silent gaps and pauses between breaths—

the guerilla conversation.