#femininity
when witch hunting was common practice
anything and everything became a sign
smart?
witch.
argumentative?
witch.
single?
witch.
promiscuous?
witch.
and it feels like we're back there today
the public eye hunting out those women who don't quite fit
queer?
witch.
feminist?
witch.
masculine?
witch.
hurting?
witch.
well, if i'm a witch,
burn me at the stake
let my smoke spiral and spread
testifying to my innocence through its stench
if i'm a witch
execute me at the altar
turn my life into a bedtime story
told to guide children to the right path
if i'm a witch
leave my body to rot beneath the trees
while my bones become home to moss and bugs
claimed by a much kinder community
maybe i am a witch
casting spells through my stanzas
performing rituals out of my words
i never wanted to fit into society's standards anyway
May 13
May 13, 2026 at 4:08 PM UTC
Thin folds extended from cloth
Outline, thick-edged for effect
Dimension, pride, hardly there
Fare-skinned, bare, fixed stare
All yours, never turned around
Free, sheet-locked paper girls
Forever static and immutable
Stationery, penned all to see
No fear of harm or duplicity
May 9
May 9, 2026 at 7:49 PM UTC
Young was she.
The half curled frong of a fiddlehead fern.
A new bamboo's shoot
Ripping apart the earth.
She was the speckled spotted back of a newborn baby deer.
And a larvae wrapped in silk.
Coddled, with nothing to fear.
She was the girl,
still nursing her baby doll off a bottle of make believe.
And yet her body bloomed,
Blossomed.
A woman.
Not ready to be.
Apr 24
Apr 24, 2026 at 4:51 AM UTC
I remember being full of the sky,
in its pastels of pink and swollen yellow.
The sun rising
in my third eye,
my hand covering my pregnant belly—
a dream I had thrilled for.
The simplicity catching my breath
like the cold winters’ moonrise.
I had longed to stop breathing here,
and I lived in a dream.
However—
it was an illusion.
It was a world never to be mine.
I cradled my daughter,
maybe how the singing earth
held the dancing ocean,
praying for its peace.
When I drank the black hole
the universe that the patriarchy
prescribed for me,
there was no light in the sky.
I felt darkness like suffocating velvet.
My tears were the rain, hissing,
that vowed to create a tsunami.
It enveloped the blackness and the earth,
and all the effervescent dreams of yesteryear.
So,
now I will live in
an endless rainy night
while I remember
the sky
as your mortal eyes
shall never glimpse it.
And I’ve heard they
whisper in hushed tones
of the legend of
Medusa.
Apr 9
Apr 9, 2026 at 11:47 PM UTC
Imagine you are born
and you are beautiful thing,
and for the next few years you will learn why.
Your parents, friends, the shows on tv send you little messages
about what beauty is,
and how it is good.
Your mother will brush your hair, her sister beside her,
they will gush in honeyed words over your beauty, inside and out.
Then they roll up their pants in the mirror and pick at their flesh and their spots sourly.
You are washing your hands in the school bathroom after playing on the monkey bars with your friend. You are both looking at yourselves in the mirror. You wonder, in passing, who possesses more beauty. It is an ugly thought. With no good answer.
Do you: Rise to the challenge? Spend secret moments tucking hairs, adjusting posture and your face in your little class chair, so any look passed your way may be in the most appealing light? Go to 2.
Do you: Reject the expectations, perceive them as a threat, get ugly, shout, pull gross faces for family pictures, come home covered in mud? Go to 1.
1. Congratulations, you are a rebel girl. Perhaps even a tomboy. You have rejected your birthright of beauty. You are brave, controversial. Some applaud you for this. Some are appalled. How could you do this? How dare you make a beautiful thing ugly. What a shame.
2. Congratulations, aren't you charming? You are pleasant, you are pretty. You carefully deliberate your choice of skirt, in hopes you will be rewarded with eyes and smiles. Seen as beautiful, you learn how to make other things beautiful too. Your handwriting, your hair, your laugh, and your tears.
Now imagine. You are sat down in the English class with the rest of the girls in your grade. Ms. K tells you about the horror of tampons and the beauty of motherhood. She informs you that most women forget the 10 on the pain scale soon after. She tries to sell it. Ms T gives it to you straight. She tells you Be prepared for misery, emotional and physical, recurring monthly. Not much talk is done about pain management, or accommodations. The girl behind you whispers about original sin.
Do you: Accept this challenge of womanhood? With grace and glowing skin? Make it your mark? Go to 2.
Do you: Find it disturbing? Unfair? Utterly humiliating? Go to 1.
1. You hide from your body. You are alienated. You are unhappy about your pain and this makes people uncomfortable. If something about you is not beautiful, it should be hidden.
2. Among sisters you are strong, but this strength is only expected. Required. You stand up tall and tuck in your gut while your core organs experience the sensation of being shredded. You would be mortified to tears to know there is a stain on the back of your pants.
At this stage, you are a house divided. You begin to realize why those praises of beauty were so coated in honey. One day you will be a mother. One day you will be a bride. Beauty is the test you pass to be something in the eyes of men. Physically yes, but its more than that. A desirable girl is more than just pretty. Desiring you is what they want you for. Desirability is your commodity. That you were born with the expectation of selling. The idea of not marrying or having children is not something to be mentioned in polite company. And while you grapple with the desirability you hold, and the world waits, watching to see what you do with it, you will start to realize desirability is a resource that is being extracted from you, weather you like it or not, all the time, by strange men outside, online, or even around the dinner table. You know vaguely, what the worst of men's intentions might be.
Do you: Withhold your desirability from men? Go to 2.
Do you: Embrace your desirability? Market it? Go to 1.
1. In studying how to market your value you learn you will never outmatch the women on TV. The ones all the boys say they have a crush on in truth or dare. You become convinced you must change yourself. You do. You put on your beautiful hair, soul, face, and body in the morning. This takes 30 minutes to 2 hours. You are judged on it frequently and judge yourself. You moisturize every 3 hours. You laugh at boys jokes to show off your smile. You never leave home without lip oil. You are greeted more frequently and with brighter faces than before. You have a greatly desired treasure, other girls are threatened by you, you climb higher and higher to outpace the girl in the chair one over. You receive favors, most don't want anything in return, except your beautiful smile of course.
2. You refuse the un-consensual enjoyment of your beauty, though many long to pry out your potential. You have chosen to define yourself on an alternative worth. You realize how difficult it is to get people to care about this worth. Your family look at you and think, you must be lost, to not embrace your ****** power. Men instead choose to interoperate this as an insecurity. You must be naive, about how to be desirable. You must have been hurt before, to have given up. How cute, they think. She's not so scary to talk to, they think.
But you were taught an art, and against any instinct you build a shrine to yourself and decorate it with love. You imagine a hidden place where every part of you is beautiful. You make who you are a masterpiece. Dark and brooding or pink and positive. These constructs of ego are fragile, it is hard to believe you are enough. But your alter to yourself stands ornate with personality and interests.
Most boys you let into your sanctum trample all over it. It means nothing to them. Most were never taught what goes into creating something beautiful. Some are even afraid of it, intimidated, and want to see it squashed.
But you'll find a boy that noticed your pouted lip. A boy that you let watch you shower. A boy that will then call you another girls name and strip you of the power you thought you built, and then as you battle to express your pain, will still look at you through their lens, an object of their desire first and foremost, underneath their ignorant gaze.
Do you: Believe you can make a thing of beauty with men? Try meet their standards? Give them the benefit of the doubt? Try find a man you can depend on? Go to 1.
Do you: Resent them? Reject them? Mistrust them? Go to 2.
1. You are a martyr. You take beatings. You risk life and death to depend on men. Confrontation is ugly. You pay your dues with your beauty.
You are torn apart and stitched back together one stitch tighter. You keep peace. You plant flowers and they are picked and you plant them again. You are only doing what is expected of you, as, first, and foremost, a beautiful thing.
2. Hopefully you are interested in women, romantically or platonically. Otherwise you are alone. You protect yourself from the ignorance of men, becoming invisible to them. The ones who notice you in passing you may try to teach. They are resistant. They do not want to talk about their lack of burden. They do not want to imagine themselves weak. They do not want to imagine you strong.
They do not see you as someone to learn from. They would prefer you be first, and foremost, a beautiful thing.
Dec 1, 2025
Dec 1, 2025 at 2:09 PM UTC
Many of us, we
women have many selves, esteemed
for our fertile skin, pregnant with worth
tightly held
hostage, bound and tied
up in roping expectations, tethered
to womb’s empty ache, yearning
to have just one more self, if only
to be more than just a woman, wasted.
Many of us, we
women? just want to be
counted.
Oct 23, 2025
Oct 23, 2025 at 4:31 PM UTC
Dear girl,
don't be sad,
never lose hope,
for ever they say bad.
-
Remember then,
By God's grace, haven't they been from
the womb of a mother?
-
Let your beauty lie in your Character,
Let your Modesty be,
the answer to their liberal thoughts,
Let the purity lie in your heart .
-
Remember, you're
God’s creation,
A Father's child,
Some one’s fate,
And will be the role model for others.
-
Never lose hope,
Let the dog’s bark
at the Modesty of a Lioness,
for you know
may how many they be
they can't change the good in you.
For you are the Real QUEEN
-
Jul 24, 2025
Jul 24, 2025 at 10:43 PM UTC
The mirror shines an echo of reality
a thousand times blurrier than I see.
The white lies praise closure, toxic autobiography,
as wax eyes glaze over, magnetic abnormality.
Painted mouth, a harsh sculpted shape.
Torn plastic hair, a blocked-off escape.
Between the fluorescence and the silver reply
the fruits of my labour or a sordid
fruit fly?
The scars on my shoulders, the spots on my face;
saturated colours polluting the lace.
Rouge tinted balm, a turned sickly ochre,
My elbows together,
shoulders narrower, triangular figure;
carved by an egoist, all angles and fissures.
The moisturiser refuses to sink into my skin,
a tantaliser of trial, on the surface, a swim.
Impenetrable, inaccessible, my hands rip the surface.
A false doll face with a fast fading purpose.
Jan 31, 2025
Jan 31, 2025 at 5:21 PM UTC
It's a weapon
I was told I need to cover
It's my body,
My soul,
And my laughter.
How could you look at me —your daughter —
And believe I'm trying to tempt my own brother ?
She says my body
Speaks too boldly
That I have to soften my edges,
Hide my hips,
and round out my corners.
Cutting down my legs
To look like less,
To not ******
Like you warned me,
Back when I was smaller.
But tell me,
How could you protect your sons
When you never learned
How to have a daughter?
Jul 21, 2025
Jul 21, 2025 at 7:40 AM UTC
Girl, you are no puppet.
You are not made to entertain.
You are imperfect and should love it
That you are beautifully whole
Despite the pain.
Not in batting eyes,
Lies the truth of what a woman is.
It’s in the red she bleeds
And in the dreams her wounded heart keeps
Aching to be perfect, yet
Unknowing, brings life to earth.
She needs no angel hair or curves refined,
Nor tall, nor petite must she be.
She is the soul that breathes life,
Not the heart that seeks validation,
For she is heaven’s whispered gift,
A light that lifts, a spirit swift.
Jul 18, 2025
Jul 18, 2025 at 5:36 PM UTC
👸
He wanted a bride with untouched skin,
A pastless girl he could fold right in.
She said the truth - soft, honest, still:
“I’ve known love… and I’ve known thrill.”
His smile cracked.
His eyes turned cold.
As if her fire made his soul old.
He left - proud. Untouched. Intact.
A man so fragile, truth felt like attack.
Now he prays for purity in the dark,
While she is out - leaving teeth marks
👸
Jul 6, 2025
Jul 6, 2025 at 2:44 PM UTC
If I weren't burdened,
with the weight,
of being a woman...
What would I do?
If each step I took,
wasn't visually measured
in the shake of my hips,
or the weight, of my *******
tell me,
what could I do?
I'd scream, for you to chase me,
and run towards the surf.
I'd throw myself, eagerly, upon its
cresting, ******** waves,
and lounge on top of bluest water,
floating idly by on its surface,
like a sleepy lotus flower...
dreamy, soft white petals,
stretched limberly towards the open sky,
and aching, for the kiss of sun.
I'd be unconcerned, and unaware
of the arch, of my back...
of the rosy fullness, of each cheek
as I bent, and knelt
between cascading water ripples
to capture pretty shells, and shiny stones
and present them all, to you,
with childish enthusiasm.
If I weren't burdened,
with the weight,
of being a woman,
I'd run, wild, through floral fields,
and hedge mazes,
as giddy, as a fairy.
I'd duck, under arboreal tunnels,
and climb, into the low-lying branches,
in the little copse, of trees,
and slumber sweetly
in its leafy canopies.
I'd immerse myself
between paperback pages,
as the wind steadily rocked me
like a babe, in its bassinet,
and the wind, whispered,
through vibrant leaves.
I'd rush out, to greet the rainstorm,
as its icy waters, folded over me.
I'd race, and run, and dance,
through puddles that split around bare feet,
and warbled, their enchanting echoes,
around the circumference
of saturated, joyful, ankles.
If femininity,
weren't the loaded gun
that presses my temple,
I'd wander, for hours, in pre-dawn streets...
blaring eighties music, like a wandering minstrel
down city streets and quiet, tree-lined roads,
until the bruisy, tangerine glow,
of impending sunrise,
gradually re-skinned my cheeks, and face.
I'd clamber across the overpass, to ogle the seasonal starbursts,
from up high,
in the blankest, blackest canvas;
fireworks screeching, screaming,
exploding, into new life,
thrown onto dark paper, like neon splatter-paint
Charring the ozone, to a hot, charnel glow
in an impossibly starry summer sky.
If womanhood, weren't the knife
they use to press my throat,
I'd spend the entire night under the stars,
gazing upwards, the way I used to.
I'd explore the navy breadth of midnight streets,
all its blues...nearly deaf, with resounding cricket chirps
nearly mute, beneath the busy squeal, of brown cicadas.
I'd travel for hours,
lost in a poetic passion,
just so in love, with things.
Dreamily gazing at a natural world,
with no strangers,
and no cars, following me
while my artistic eye,
drank in the atmosphere,
until satiated.
I'd climb poles, in sundresses,
clamber over fences,
explore the world,
and all of its understated beauty
without reservation, or end.
I could go anywhere,
I could go,
everywhere...
and never need a chaperone.
I'd think nothing of chasing dreams,
that suddenly grew teeth, or fangs,
and came after me,
like the main monster,
in a horror cinema.
I'd open up,
and freely speak,
to the people around me.
I'd never be too afraid,
to close my eyes, again
and receive a kiss,
at the end of a sweet date.
I'd feel pretty, to feel pretty.
I wouldn't try to hide it,
to chameleon myself into the crowd,
in the hopes that no one else,
would notice me.
I'd feel like family...was really family.
Smile so hard, that the mask I wore, would crack.
In short...
I would do all the things I used to do,
before someone showed me,
how dangerous it was, to live.
Jun 5, 2025
Jun 5, 2025 at 9:39 AM UTC
The moon has yet again been touched
On every side by light of sun,
And with the unrelenting march of time,
A new lament's begun.
What good's a heart made heavy
By affections idle and unspent?
And what's a sanctuary
Where no precious thing is ever sent?
Come to me soon, my hope and vision,
Longingly I wait for you!
Imagination mocks me
With a stream of fancies not yet true!
Your face, it is an ever-shifting blur
I almost can behold,
Bejeweled with dark and starry eyes
That shine as freshly polished gold.
Your skin, it would be tender,
Colored peach-pink with a brush of rose,
Your tiny form light as a cloud
In my embrace as you repose.
Your smile, it would contain the sunlight,
And your laugh, the breath of spring,
And as you dream in peace embosomed,
To you I would softly sing.
These images delight me
And revive the fires of my heart,
But then the vapors from which they were made
All scatter and depart.
Oh little unformed soul,
Your warmth within my arms I still know not.
Your phantom weight upon my chest
Has many hopes and sorrows wrought.
The record keepers of the sky've
Declared another wait in vain,
So let this wasted flesh mourn with me
In these coming days of rain.
Apr 14, 2025
Apr 14, 2025 at 9:27 AM UTC
every evening i slaughter the sun.
every evening i cut her up on unforgiving mountain peaks
i dip her blood orange blistered flesh in saltwater;
i do this for the moon.
the sun gurgles as she drowns
Sep 17, 2019
Sep 17, 2019 at 4:43 PM UTC
Two flowers grew
in my blue heart;
a pink one
that carried
the art of showing weakness,
the love for children,
the deep care that lies within
well-thought actions,
delicacy
and
complexity
and a blue one
that carried
the impulse to protect others
at any cost,
companionship,
simplicity,
fidelity,
and strength.
They tried
to cage,
rip apart,
chop off,
uproot
and
burn
the pink flower.
To destroy it
until it bled
and they could drain
all the warmth
from my
sea-colored
heart.
But we were never made for
lonely colors,
and in every blue
there is a shade of purple
and pink.
So with the strength of a god
and the resilience of a saint,
the pink flower
loomed
and raised until it touched the sky
stronger than ever,
in my heart
made of blue-toned gold.
Apr 15, 2025
Apr 15, 2025 at 5:20 AM UTC
My mother’s white, quiet patience sways,
tantalizing before me like a well-lit crystal chandelier in my grandmother’s house.
I never take a bite of it,
an ever so-careful child, my grandmother used to fondly describe me,
a picky eater;
I never grew bigger than I used to be — still so small and scrawny,
a shivering child left crying in our bahay kubo, awaiting my mother’s return.
She comes home and laughs at my innocent anxiety.
It is a promised heirloom, it seems,
my mother’s white, quiet patience — well-kept in my late grandmother’s bedroom
where my father can never find
for his hands to choke and tear like an old 90s letter —
I was in her womb and he was in Egypt
down with the mummified pharaohs; she sent him poems
and I got a tiny glass pyramid, a snow of gold dust
I spun it — turned it upside down
until it broke, bathing me golden like a tiny sun.
I hid in my late aunt’s room, next to my mother’s mute patience,
it spills like milk, drenches like tears, blinds like a ray of light.
I can never inherit my mother’s patience but I wear her skin now;
twenty years, I have grown bigger, taller
and her sorrows and regrets fit me well like a brown, fur coat,
a pocket full of resentment, of repressed aching, of fingers numb from writing poems;
my mother was a poet, I know this now;
my father — an ordinary man,
his chest is a hollow chamber in a pyramid far, far away in Giza.
Sometimes, I think he’s still there, lying next to pharaohs
for all of perpetuity.
Sometimes, I think I have inherited his mystery
his tendency to perplex the eye, like a pyramid of secrets and secrets,
the archaeologists have given up after unearthing empty chambers after empty chambers,
Maybe there is nothing here to see
but dead, young, unloving bones
next to earthworms burrowing on my mother’s poems.
I can never inherit my mother’s patience; sometimes I think
she has left her aching somewhere in our bahay kubo,
in my dollhouse, perhaps, and I have picked it up
like a spiral seashell,
like Barbie’s tiny suitcase looking pretty in glitter,
swallowed in a single gulp, it’s still here inside me,
growing and poking and tearing and disfiguring,
I refuse to spit it out.
How do I carry it when she herself has not?
I scratch my limbs at the injustice.
My mother’s white, quiet patience sits in Lola Glo’s room,
like a ghost that never haunts but I wish it did —
sometimes, I still wait for damning screams, for broken windows,
for love poems burning in hell for its sins,
taking me down with them.
Sometimes, I still wait for her to leave
like a Macedonian queen fleeing Egypt and never coming back.
Then, I would have nothing to carry, nothing to wear,
nothing to ache for at starless nights —
no poems to open and seal like a stone entrance to a pharaoh’s chamber.
My mother’s white, quiet patience is an unlit crystal chandelier,
a few feet on top of my head. I laugh and spin like a tornado,
like a mad girl, swinging and raising my arms like I was five —
I hit and shatter everything in sight
then blame it on the fairies.
I eat the fine, hand-cut, polished crystals, I bleed poison on my tongue,
and my mother is Cleopatra nowhere to be found.
Everything is an accident, even my intentional carelessness,
now paper-white and porcelain-clean.
Everything is forgiven, even my father’s loud, beer-laced cruelty,
even my hands, closed in a fist.
My mother’s smile was bright and comforting,
but everything is an earthworm feeding on her poems.
And every poem is a poem till it rots
beneath a far-off, sun-swept Egypt.
Mar 30, 2025
Mar 30, 2025 at 1:53 AM UTC
My only crime was to have been born a woman.
a crime with no trial, no verdict, just sentence.
The world does not break us all at once;
it whittles, peels, pares us down
until we fit the hollow it has carved.
They say we are too much.
Too loud, too soft, too sharp, too small.
A contradiction they built,
then condemned for its shape.
We fold ourselves into corners,
tuck our rage beneath our tongues,
wrap our worth in apologies
and call it survival.
That is not living— it is simply existing.
But we are not ghosts.
Not echoes of something lesser.
We are steel spun fine,
fire woven into silk—
soft does not mean breakable.
We are here.
We have always been here.
And we are not leaving quietly.
Feb 2, 2025
Feb 2, 2025 at 9:30 PM UTC
It's 3:43am and I'm wondering if the spider in the corner of my bathroom is dreaming
I wonder if she knows about the sun and if she ever dreams of weaving a web in the moonlight
I wonder if she knows what I'm saying when I tell her "don't worry, i'll keep you safe" and I wonder if she believes me
Nov 27, 2024
Nov 27, 2024 at 9:47 AM UTC
Athena turned ’round her head
like a night owl on the sly
and looked up behind her
as gold Apollo crossed the sky,
riding with his four coursers’
flying gilded manes and hooves.
Their silver flanks and quarters
thunder across the earth’s blue roof.
The rhythm of their beat
stamps a lyric all their own,
blood coursing with the heat
of the sun-disk they all towed.
The she-god of the wise
observes this cloud-streaked scene,
the man-god shining out,
casting shadows ’round Athene.
Apollo’s path is sinking low
as the winter months advance.
The frost now blurs his glow
and bare forests fall into trance.
It’s in this creeping night
that Athena finds her time.
She draws her wisdom in twilight,
no need for blinding light up high.
For she shines not with a sun.
Instead she lights her own pathway.
By her craft and wits she’ll run
her own trail she blazed today.
Nov 26, 2024
Nov 26, 2024 at 8:26 AM UTC
Enshrined vessel corporeal ,
the numberless strands
of infinite time ,
kaleidoscope persona of
Nature , Temperance and Psyche .
☆
With serene countenance ,
in sweet golden light ,
the codes of the Goddess ,
Queen of Cups
and Queen of Swords .
☆
With transforming Geometry
of Justice and
Compassion ,
the unseen ancient force
of her terrible power ,
far beyond base contemplation ,
☆
Rains down the verdict
on dishonour and strife ,
elevating the
transcended ,
while relegating all else
to Beelzebub , earthbound
and gehenna .
Nov 2, 2024
Nov 2, 2024 at 9:22 AM UTC
always happy, always in bloom,
always one step away from becoming
just a collection of parts;
her head still smiling and pretty
rolling across the floor.
sorry, did i break the illusion too soon?
not so beautiful now that you know
what it feels like to be her.
makes you wish the flashes would stop,
makes you want to scream
"can't you see she's already done enough?"
why can't they set her free?
but alas,
she must always be happy,
always in bloom,
always one breath away from becoming
just a collection of parts.
Jul 1, 2024
Jul 1, 2024 at 11:29 AM UTC
You admire pieces of me
Soft and beautiful
For the pleasure they can give you
You condemn my capability
Practicality and spirituality
You claim I can’t have it both ways
I can’t indulge my senses and hold power the same
Divine femininity has become synonymous with delusion
In a modern world that will never love me
I am aligned with the moon
I am in tune
With the rhythm of the waves
And the passage of days
You don’t know what I feel
How it is to exist in a world not built for you
Every living soul
Assigning your worth for what you can’t control
All of mankind is built on the principle
That my body was built for your enjoyment
That my life belongs to whatever man finds beauty in my eyes
And peace in my silence
Of course I turn to the tides and the trees and the breeze
To find comfort in their embrace
When you can’t hold me
You mock me for connecting to something bigger than my body
Loving Mother Nature more than the woman that brought
Me into this world
Yet you reduce my strength to beauty
Tell me I am too weak and small and simple minded
To understand a world you built
Out of fear of me
My divine femininity
May 9, 2024
May 9, 2024 at 8:10 PM UTC