To The 70%
Thank you for twiddling your pens,
and straightening your ties.
Thank you for playing red light, green light
with little buttons on podiums and your sausage fingers.
Thank you for making decisions about my body
so I don't have to.
You have wrapped yourself in the American flag like
it is a blindfold.
You are smiling as you place another brick onto the tower of the patriarchy
making it easier for you to claw your way to the top of a temple to a false god.
I bet you pump Betty Crocker and Tide Laundry Detergent into the veins of your wife.
I bet you stuff her like a rag doll and throw her around like one, too
I bet
you own her like a trophy,
a symbol of your triumph as a 'man'.
You sit her on the mantle,
next to your shotgun,
and the picture of your daughter at her christening as a baby.
Her puff pastry dress and bracelet of pearls serve as indications that
the sparkle in her eye will always be a pink one. That
she will glue her legs together in the name of shiny, Christian abstinence. That no one will rip them apart for the shade of her lipstick or the size of her chest.
Though it was not her fault that you were late to pick her up from school again
Though it was not her fault that she smiled back at the boy leaving basketball practice
Though it was not her fault that he opened her like a present three days before Christmas
You shut the destroying thing inside of her until September when
it had the nerve to crawl out and stare her in the face,
all of the naivety sprawled out in front of her
surrounded by a ****** mess
you expect her to clean it up,
without even helping her off the stained sheets of the hospital bed.
Think about that silver frame and the child that graces the inside of it.
Look into her eyes and see that promise,
an unopened gift under the tree.
Doesn't it make you wonder why you
are the one telling her when she should grow up?
Doesn't it make you wonder why you
could ever blame a woman for her own ****?
To The 70%:
Stop using the flag that's supposed to represent my freedom
as a blindfold.