How many times did I tell her,
this is going to hurt?
how much threat does she need
to realize that this will not **** her
like a bullet through the head, loud and fast?
But a slow burning feeling of a torch
lit down her feet, inch by inch
she’ll hear her skin thicken into
wounds
and then into ash.
How many arguments does she need to swallow
before she will hear the sound of her own voice
telling her to fight?
How many breaths does she have to hold
for her to realize
there’s no air there,
and there will never be?

But I won’t stop,
I know one day she’ll look at me
with her eyes, pure,
like of a child’s
free from all the deaths she had suffered and
with her scarred hands
she’ll meet mine,
touching the glass between us.

*(a note to self)