i didn't know how to bite when girlhood was torn from me.

do you remember how old you were when you were taught your body wasn’t yours?

when you realized you belonged to tradition, to ancestors

(to strange men from foreign lands bearing sweets and shackles?)


i had always known unholiness lived in my womb

even before i knew the extent to which the blight spread;

staining my sheets, my skin, my power

before i knew that original sin would become my keeper.


when i banged on doors, begging you to let me breathe,

did you hear me? or did you resign yourself to turning a blind eye

burying a dying girl woman under blankets and turmeric.

you can not wrap your regrets in pretty red fabric forever


i hope you don't forgive yourself. not for

declaring me subhuman and forsaking me when i needed you the most.

not until i forgive myself for believing you.

humans can't lock up forces of will, feminine vengeance.
​

one day i will reclaim the body you stole,

sneaking into your home at dawn,

taking your girls and cherishing their dreams,

and topple the kingdom of lies you have built for yourself.


when i succumb to the unavoidable,

a message of warning to the gravediggers-

etched across my crumbling headstone will be cause of death: childbirth

here is proof, here is the reckoning that will whirl into a fury


lest you forget the girls bathing themselves in anger,

their nails sharpening to knife points whilst you forget to hold their hands.

god save him who tries to shave her into rounded edges;

as hell hath no fury like a Woman.

Writer's Statement: This poem was written in anger as a critique of culture.