You don’t get scars when they cut out your tongue;
It just makes it harder to breathe for a minute
Or two.

It was longer,
the first time they told you to quiet down,
When your thoughts didn’t matter because they weren’t
Sugar sweet and
syrup to swallow,
You felt it then,

The marrow scraping knowledge that this was what it meant
to be a woman,
And you were fully grown
before your 14th birthday,
In a classroom,
because you were angry.

Ignorant words had slashed your heart and you were
angry,
but you were a volcano under water,
Ready to meet the tide
and create new ground with your voice.
Girls don’t get to be angry unless there’s blood
and they tell you as much.

It is the first time your mind
Had been so thoroughly dismissed, the first time they told you
that you needed permission to be,
like you were nothing
but a slave
to a biological side-effect,
That gave them the right to take your tongue.

Laugh at your knowledge,
Taunt your vision,
Disparage your ambition,
Patronize your every decision,
You are a woman now and your tongue has one purpose
that the choking
Helps.

You have felt the cold sting of words made of steel,
and the warm slap of vanilla entitlement,
from strangers and friends alike.
The acid burn of the slow reveal
and the Atlantic shock of instant surgery,
They have cut out your tongue all your life.

But

It grows back.
You pick up the pieces of yourself that the world
is determined to dissolve, and you glue them back on,
with grit, and fire, and blood.
It is hard to breathe, for a minute, or two, but you don’t need permission to rage and question and cry out.

They did not ask for permission to take your tongue, your voice, you,
But they will receive what they did not ask for, newly formed and forge fresh,
White hot as you sear your words into their bones.
You are a woman.

And you have learned that
You don’t get scars when they cut out your tongue;

They do.