Don’t you dare tell me it’s love,
don’t you dare tell me it’s “just life”,
when you’ve never carried the weight of choice,
when you’ve never had hands force themselves,
when you’ve never looked at your own body and felt—
disgust, betrayal, rage—
for something that was never yours to begin with.
You’ve never been thirteen, shaking in a cold clinic waiting room,
heart hammering with fear that the world will hate you,
body carved open by guilt, by doubt,
the shame tattooed like a brand on your skin.
And you think you know what love is?
You never see the hidden scars,
the marks left by hands uninvited,
by voices saying “boys will be boys” while my voice is silenced,
a whisper swallowed by the same mouths that judge me
for what they took.
Is that justice? Is that your idea of freedom?

You sit in leather,
sign your names on paper
that ultimately becomes chains,
binding bodies you will never know,
dictating futures you will never know.
you preach protection,
you wrap us in a lie called love,
while you slice away autonomy,
carve out dignity,
turn our pain into a headline,
our lives into statistics.
you do not know what it’s like to flinch,
to walk home at night with keys clenched tight
like weapons, like armor,
you do not know what it’s like to wonder
if you’ll be believed,
if justice even has a name,
if freedom even has a face.

You doing now what
Freedom is until
You flee a war torn country
You will never no the need to
Eat unless you’ve been in famine
You don’t know what’s
Sick
Unless you’ve been in see the human soul
And what is pure good too

If the day ends and I no longer have the rights to myself,
Is it truly the land of the free?
Or is it only free to the straight white men that loom in offices and make laws on matters that don’t relate to them.
If I wake up tomorrow and see I can’t love who I love,
Is it really what Jesus said when he said love thy neighbor?
Or is thy neighbor only supposed to be a straight white Christian man?
A man who claims to live by a book written by other men like him,
Claiming stories of a man who loves everyone,
Of a man who said everyone must love equally
But why do these men not follow the simple rule from the book they revolve their lives around?
Is it that hard to love each other?
To love me?
A pained fifteen-year-old girl who wants to love someone and be loved,
Yet the rights of being a girl and the rights of love are ripped out of my torn and blistered hands and handed to the boy next to me who already has his own rights of living.
Is my life worth less than the next person because I might not marry a man?
That I might need to save my life by having an abortion after I’m ***** by the same men who claim they know me and my body?
At least my struggles aren’t as intense as my friends,
But is that a good thing?
No.
My rights might become limited,
But theirs might be truly gone
If the sun breaks the horizon and I lose everyone and everything I’ve ever known,
Will my home of the brave no longer be a home to those who fall into the categories of failure?
The work I’ve created, we’ve created, might be destroyed once the ticks of the tallies grow.

You should follow the law,
And if it's wrong
It should **** you off
And make you motivated for change.
Motive with your discipline should result in action,
Whether you merely speak out for what you believe,
In verbal or physical protest.
Your ancestors had freedoms to yours in fractions
And wealth the same,
Still they fought
To edge out a line in the sand
For a land with equal rights for every man.
Do you wish to return to such old & backward ways
As feudal days with no say?

A mountain from a range,
Of such everlasting granite.
Carved over ages,
Shook from under footing
Like statues who will
Not wilt or crumble
Only to manifest
Into the space around it
Reminding me that as weak
As I feel, Inside of me is a similar
Persistence that won't be moved
By the capricious whim of man and imbecilic masses who follow.
I will seize your sharp shank and excavators trying to make me into something I am not.
I am a woman with equal rights
And dignity far beyond your pompous attempts to roil this robust range down. Your false statues will crumble when the mirror knocks at your midnight door. Here, look at yourself.