I am sitting in a classroom during my freshman year of college
Reading about **** and infidelity
Western literature,
Where Jupiter can **** virgins for sport
Where Hamlet can assault Ophelia
And it's okay because he is pretending to be insane.
I see my assailant's face in Hamlet's
The boy who told me he was sorry six months later
Because he had been dealing with some things in his head
I see my assailant's hands in Zeus's
At seven years old, clearly a ******
But you can use my tongue as a gag
As you cause me to choke on my pleas for peace
You see, throughout the ages
Women have had their tongues used as gags
And as nooses
Like when Maya Angelou writes about taking back her body
We say it is ******
When Maya Angelou writes about ****
We rip her words from school curriculums
When Ovid writes about ****
We say it is literature
When women write **** into the folds of their skin
We call them attention ******
When men pen abuse onto paper
We say it is eloquent
Say it is mythology
Watching a friend get brutally drugged and date ***** is no myth
Burning her ******'s name out of her mouth is no myth
Replaying my own movie of childhood abuse at seven
And assault at sixteen is no myth
We treat women's narratives of violation as stories
Just ask Bill Cosby.
As I am forced to read about my own history for entertainment
As I hear my father say how college girls cry **** to get attention
That they should be more careful
How am I supposed to trust my own memory?
When everything around me tells me
I am lying
How am I supposed to trust my own experience?
My tongue keeps getting stuck inside of itself when I try to tell my story
Because I fear people will not believe me
Maya Angelou writes that she knows why the caged bird sings
But I know what keeps it silent.