Possibly the ugliest word
Just
Used to excuse
Thrown about to limit
Quantifying my experience
With your own.
You say it with such ease,
Just a joke,
Just a little,
Just a girl,
Just this one time.
Like you can know
What anything
means to me.
Your just jokes have power
to make me bleed internally,
to press play on tapes
recorded since my birth,
embedded in my brain.
Your just a little
could span a canyon
or possibly to the sun,
little enough to
rewrite the course of my life.
Your just a girl,
quantifying my worth
through my gender,
pushing me to reject
my very flesh.
Just this one time
making me doubt my
own thoughts
cursing me to minimize
every single one time
and how it broke me
before I was even grown.
And if that was not enough Just
Stealing my sanity
Undermining my success
Just school
Just graduation
Just a job
like living in constant
anxious waiting
and making straight A's
was no big deal
multiple suicide attempts
and losing hope over and over
was nothing
After all of this
I'd love to just you
yet I can't.
Even as I carry on,
it can not be
just my past.
I will never call you
just a man.
You are not a man or
just a predator,
you are so much more
than one word
Just a father
because you never were
and you never will be.