I am not
silk linens for you to drape
across the arm of the couch
like a waiter
adorns his arm with
a porcelain-colored napkin
that never bears a
crease.

I am not
glass;
the vase that shattered,
and leaked clear blood
that lapped across the floorboards
and decorated the
suffocating
flowers with invaluable beads
cannot possibly define me.

I feel sensitivity
when a frost
chills its way about my teeth,
but the state is not penned
into my sexuality.

Now if I were to shoot
a bayonet
that belongs within the leather jacket
of a man’s
costly callused and
blistered
hands with, instead, my own
that were spun
from the fabric of my dress,

I would aim
for the notion
that labels women—
like we are merely a crate of pomegranates—
as “gentle, domestic brutes”
and my gunshot would echo
with the shout of a
vindication

on the rights of women
that can be written down between the
sheer
of our tyrannical stockings.

I’ll cut my hair
to the length of controversy;
for if I must rebel,
my passion for women’s equality
   begins at the roots.