Sometimes,
I get so angry, I want
to tear open my skin.

Who needs anger management
when you can give yourself
a bloodletting instead?

I want to annotate my wrists
with the names of every person
who ever hurt me--
part the Red Sea with steel.

And I'm pretty sure a phlebotomy
is the closest I'll ever get to a lobotomy
(or an exorcism).

My trauma (my fury) is a toddler
throwing a tantrum in the middle
of the dairy aisle in the supermarket.

I pluck this child--
feral and snivelling--
from my veins and throw
her over my shoulder.

I don't know where her screaming ends
and where mine begins.

Sometimes, I think all she really wants
is a hug.

Boy math
is when men on Instagram claim women
who solve boy math equations are bigots.

Boy math is men who benefit from patriarchy
misplacing the meaning of the word “bigotry”
within their male privilege.

We are wo
morpheme for
man.

But I see your pain, sisters.

I acknowledge it.

I validate it;

I gift us the vowel
e

w o e

for we will not stay broken
while men claim the throne to

whole

I think perhaps I will write
a poem once the pain has subsided.

Obsessive Compulsive Disorder is
crying when the shelf your father
has just ******* into your bedroom wall is

c r
o
o
k   e
         d.

Fool me once--
shame on you.

Fool me twice--
shame on you.

Fool me three times--
STILL shame on you.

{gaslight}

You say my tears
are a sign of
weakness

even though
they are of
the same composition
as the tidal waves

tell me—

will you call the ocean
weak?