Instead of a work of fiction
Writing of fantasy or addiction
I chose to write about me instead.
About something I thought was better left unsaid.
They said I was confused, that I misunderstood
Is this what it means to enter adulthood?
It means we’re punished for being open?
Or having to pretend we were just joking?
I wasn’t a child, I was eighteen years old.
Now I carry it, it comes back around, like the flu or a cold
When it’s someone you know
Someone you should be able to trust, where do you even go?
We live in a world where men think being accused
Is the same as being sexually abused.
Where if a woman says something, she’s just lighting a fuse.
But I’m starting a fire because I’m sick of living in hues of gray.
I don’t want to sit back and pretend I didn’t lose something
And then I turn on the tv and feel sick if I watch the news
I see we live in a society where we teach girls to protect themselves
We tell them to make sure he rapes a different girl, not you.
One in three women they say, make sure it’s not you.
And when we speak up, we’re told he won’t be punished.
So why bother saying anything at all?
We’re told we won’t be believed.
Well not today, not for me.
I’m tired of somedays, and maybe they’ll see.
We live in a world where girls clothes are regulated
To make sure it’s the boys who are educated.
We tell our girls their cases won’t be advocated
That boys will be boys, and their comfort is overrated.
You’re homophobic because you don’t want
To be treated the way you treat women
And then you don’t want to be the villain
Catcalling us on the streets
But what if it was your daughter, your mother, your niece?
Defending yourself, saying we can’t take a compliment
And we have no choice but silence when you’re dominant.
You walk down the street without a care
But we worry we’ll be trapped in some nightmare
Make sure it isn’t you.
She’ll always be more drunk, showing more skin, be more alone
And when you say nothing, you don’t even realize you condone it
When you say she was drunk, it was her fault,
You’re blaming a victim, letting him get away,
And you’re saying it wasn’t really an assault
You say if it was your daughter, you’d **** them
Don’t you care what the other daughters will become?
I won’t be silenced,
Not in the face of this violence
Not when a boy can **** a girl and get three months
Where they can sit back and call us ****** and *****
Not when he can ‘grab em by the *****’
But if I say something, they’ll just shoot me down or call me pushy.
I’m tired of meaning nothing
I’m tired of them thinking touching
Without permission is their given right
Instead of something that is literally disgusting.
This poem demands to be spoken,
And I refuse to be broken.