It is summer
The smell of beer and hot dogs is sweet in the air like a national anthem
It's baseball season
And you love baseball and going to these games with your boyfriend

And today might be the perfect day
As you watch the little boys with their sticky grins on their fathers' shoulders
As you watch all the happy people on the jumbo-tron
And then you see your own face
And your boyfriend's down on one knee
And you see an engagement ring
So big it blinds the screen

And the way he looks at you
Like he caught the home run ball
And then you look up, and see the thousands of people in the stadium rooting for you
To do it
To say, "yes"

This is for the woman who says no.

They will boo you as you run down the stadium steps because it will never be the wedding aisle
Some will throw popcorn at you because it will never be rice or confetti
And then someone will catch your wrist because it will never be the bouquet
They will call you a villain
A bitch
They will call you worse
They will curse the day you learned any other words besides
(Yes)
And sorry
The ones who think themselves kind will ask why you couldn't just fake it for the screen
Why you had to make "no" a public thing
There will little girls in the audience, after all
And you denied them their fucking fairy tale

Someone will tell your now ex-boyfriend how undeserving you are
How any sane woman would have loved that proposal
And you must've not been shit anyway.
Probably crazy
And he will nod

Somewhere, a man calls to a woman from outside his car window
("Hey sexy! Come closer!")
She says no
("Cunt! You're ugly, anyway!")

Somewhere a woman argues for a higher salary
And her coworkers call her a bitch in the break room

Somewhere a woman's friends signed her up for a makeover show
The audience laughs.
She says she loves her sweatpants
The audience laughs
When they throw them out anyway

Somewhere a girl is told if she doesn't want to hear a song about rape, don't listen to it
But it follows her in the supermarket
The gym
The girls' clothing aisle
And now she knows all the words
Somewhere, a woman is told to get naked at a frat party
She refuses
A boy with a kind smile puts his arm around her
Offers her a beer
Filled with a magic that erases
(No) From her vocabulary

I am sixteen
In the manager's office at my first job when my boss
Whispers a list of the things he'd do to my body
I say no
He threatens my next paycheck

In my long term boyfriend's bed
After having sex five times already that morning I say no
He says, "This probably isn't going to work."

In Connecticut, a girl is asked to senior prom by someone other than her boyfriend
She say no
And his knife blooms a corsage in her chest

In California, a young virgin boy thinks about you
And the ones like you
The ones who said no
And the audience that boos
And the poor sucker who was owed something
And denied it
And he cocks his gun.