you judged me
out of my own beauty
the same way you judged yourself
out of that dress

⚠Trigger Warning:
The following poem contains subject matter pertaining to ****** assault and misogyny. ⚠
~
you call the ******

*****:

because the hair between my legs reminds you of a cat's fur? reminds you of an animal that is frightened by the simplest of matters--yes, you call me weak.

but that is just the way you prefer us, isn't it?

with our backs arched (but not too high).

forbidden to leave room for a man to crawl under our bodies.

a man is not meant to lie beneath a womxn, no;  

for, a womxn's place is between the man and the mattress.
___________________
***­:

is that all we are good for?
__________________­
box:

many things can be put inside a womxn, an empty vessel that you believe it is your role to make full again.

storage locker where you keep your **** rent-free.

slab of cardboard collecting filth in the attic.
__________________
bea­ver:

another animal analogy.
_________________­_
cookie. cupcake. ****(in). bean:

to butter up. to Flick.

inhaled, not savoured;

nothing more than a midnight fast-food run.
___________________
min­k:

skinned and sold and worn-- a notch in your belt (and your bedpost).
_________________­
cherry:

popped(!)
____________­_____
clam:

stolen treasure.
_________________­
kipper:

in the staff room, someone has left an unopened bag of shrimp crisps. A man I work with walks in and says it smells “like bad ***** in here.”


i laughed.


why the **** did I laugh?
__________________
flo­wer:

plucked from the garden of eden.
__________________­
*******:

blackout.
_____________­____
hoo-ha:

a battle cry.
___________________­
****:

a word i was taught never to say aloud

(i do it anyways.)
_________________­
***:

you abbreviate our bodies.

our voices, too.

will we never make it to four letters?

(love)
__________________­
whispering eye:

a whisper is but a gateway to silence.
__________________­_
You call the ******

*****.
***.
box.
******.
cookie.
cupcake.
****(in).
bean.
mink.
cherry.
clam.
kipper.
flower.
*******.
hoo-ha.
****.
***.
whispering eye.

but never what it truly is:

Beautiful.
____________________

There is power in knowing that I can disappear as quickly as I came
That I don’t need you need you  
There is power in holding interest cause I can lose it as fast as I found you
Being a magical woman means I can vanish before your eyes at the first sight of wavering
My body miraculous there is power in my smile

Brown is the color you get when you mix all the others together
So they never know where I am from

I am the resident brown person.
The closest skin that tans
that’s who they think I must be

Your children play with modeling clay, play doh, and with different colored squishy slime.

When you put them to bed, take as many colors as you can from their play box and knead them together and you’ll understand why my skin is brown.

And maybe you won’t have to ask where I am from two, three or four times only to still refuse what is obvious
So obvious they forgot to put it in history books

When you enslave, colonize, migrate
You mix
The coalescence and coagulation of blood into human skin
This  should be of no surprise
you mix
Brown children on the back of white mothers, brown children on the backs of black fathers
Brown children tied to the curve of brown womyn’s backs

So do you understand why America is a brown womxn, too?

Womxn raise your heads
No more fear or dread
The patriarchy is dead

Celebrate our lives
We were never just wives
Womxn raise your heads

By divine union we’re led
An interdependent mend
The patriarchy is dead

No more fear or strife
Using our keys as knives
Womxn raise your heads

Fearlessly we tread
Painting the town red
The patriarchy is dead

As the dolphin gracefully dives
We have finally arrived
Buzz heard loudly from our hives

Womxn raise your heads
The patriarchy is dead

1.
It felt like crossing      
all things cross, right?

2.
It has been many years since we have walked through that tunnel
and into this land
where the hands of spirits became the wings of ancestors over us
and the quiet inner gust became an orator of truth  

Truthteller could you tell me again my name
They have given me so many on the northern journey,
disguised me to be one of the multiple
flickering pixels on a television screen

eyes darker than their own
but who has darker eyes

3.
She is the barefoot daughter of the Pachamama
womxn of many tongues
womxn whose tongue was not cut off
so you hear her sing when the sun comes up
and sway with the blades of grass
onward in the direction of the voices and the wind
and all the things that cry and laugh out loud  

4.
They made you cross, too
and at the same time
But they made you forget
about the birds,
the wind,
your name- our name
and the alphabet
5.
silence is the alphabet used to speak truth  

6.
They made you forget your name.
Ask them your name as you look up at the sky
cloudy or clear
as  children lay silently next to demarcation lines
housed in steel bars
gloomy and lost
ask and listen
to be humbled by your name  

7.
The spirits call again
can you hear them now?

back through the tunnel of innocence,
they whisper your name.

I am being stretched and little parts of me are ripping off

but I want to, I want to grow
even if it’s not always pleasant

I want to be a womxn after her own soul
i want my authenticity far more, for I fear
I cannot compromise these lengthy rivers in me
they span too wide
and some too deep 
flowing rapidly down steep mountains
and over vast stretches of land
flooding plains, but also paradoxically
in arid climate nurturing seedlings

Beautiful boy,
you never did quite understand the meaning of "I love you".
Not for lack of trying... no never.
Rather because "I love you"' has always had an undercurrent of vulnerability that frightened you, demanded too much of your marred soul, your scarred soul that you spend so much time trying to cleanse..
Like paint brushes in turps I watch you try wash out the essence of your soul in alcohol, you drown your soul in Hennessy, as if speaking those words out loud would be too much for both you and me.
See I love you... to you has always looked like closed doors
and somehow sitting on your lap that night one was re-opened.
re-awakened, somehow I felt your soul bleed into mine and I haven't been able to cleanse myself of you just yet.

You cried that night in my arms, disintegrated a little and I think you thought that I was seeing you at your weakest, but babe...
oh love I had never been quite as enamored as I was watching you disintegrate because in that moment I was granted citizenship into the state of your soul.

War-torn,
in upheaval over a failed love.
The state of the nation that is you was under siege, from a mighty enemy named depression.
Aware of all your weaknesses, the enemy had laid siege to the mainland of your heart.
Crippled by sorrow, the soldiers of your soul lay down arms- unable to put up a fight.
Unable to produce fire rounds any longer.
Unable to move in time to the war torn anthem of late night binge drinking, your soldiers lay down their arms at my feet.
And while your sorrow had decided to reign sovereign- enjoying short-lived spotlight- supreme,
I caught a glimpse of the little left of your heart.
Barely beating,
God barely breathing your chest heaved up and down-  
the sound of your breath the only thing reminding you that you were still breathing and though the war ravaged on... you had called a truce.
You had waved the white flag... meekly before laying it over the bodies of broken promises and late nights that haunt you still.
And I know you're haunted... by what could have been.
Should have been.

And while I was granted citizenship into your soul, there is no road-map because the roads are laden with skeletons that I carelessly yanked out of the cupboard of your heart trying to make sense of the little you have left to give.
I know you watch me trip and fall on gravestones in conversation, secrets buried so deep that I get caught off guard eveytime one yanks on my heart strings in the rare moments that you slip up.
In the moments when your pain isn't buried quite deep enough and this girl with eyes a little too brown has managed to exhume the past... pieces of it.

Emotional labour on the landscape of your heart has left me tired.
Exhausted.
Recently I found a river of peacefulness which we call friendship. Still waters, rippling in the moments I remember how badly I wanted to believe you when you said you loved me.
How badly I wished you'd meant it.  
Quiet waters of friendship, and while petals of of broken promises of an unrequited love skim the surface, it was more than satisfactory.
Recently, I've been surprised at how much comfort I draw from this stream, bathing in it...
I began to float... Comfortable.
Unaware of what was to come.
Love, why wouldn't you warn me that a tsunami was on it's way?
Because baby I'm drowning.
I'm drowning.
I'm drowning.
I'm drowning.
I'm drowning in you.
In your ambiguity.
In your empty promises.
In your beauty.
I thought I was drinking you in but somewhere along the way I began to drown...
I'm drowning...

One of your soldiers heard my cries.
His name was a drunken "I love you."
And I clutched onto his slippery hand as he pulled me,
exhausted onto the shore named 'I'm sorry'.
I have been lying ashore for a week now,
and while I finger the citizenship of your souls ID card called a whatsapp profile, with an barcode of an archived chat-
I've begun to wonder about intimacy, our safe space...
about us because there is so much u in us right now that somehow the sound of my sorrow has begun to be drowned out by the overflowing stream of forgiveness that I have baptized you in weekly as of late.
My cries have been drowned out as I took you to heavenly heights, hand holding, bible-open.
Eyes closed in reverence.

The same way that your eyes were shut the first night we spent together.
Weighed down by the spirit of a praying womxn you unraveled before me.
Every stitch of your being ceremoniously unraveled with each tear.
Each fear launched with each tear,
like a heat seeking missile into the very core of my being-
received loud and clear.

Unraveled.
The cosmic galaxy that is you enveloped me,
stardust dancing beneath my fingertips as I pulled you closer,
stardust- fragmented and utterly beautiful.

Beautiful,
there is nothing despicable about your brokenness for you are forged from Holy Spirit Fire and an undying love.
Those blue veins that I know you've been tempted to slit open house iron which is literally only found in stardust.
Millenniums worth of beauty flows through your body.
Millennia worth of beauty- locked in each one of your cells.
You are the living breath of Israelite slaves- son of a Lion.
You are the living breath of your ancestors.

You are a glorious, inhaling abyss
and while there are valleys of sorrow housed in your soul,
I have also seen Himilayian-like mountain peaks of your joy,
I have also caught glimpses of the road-map you plan to use to unlock the dreams locked inside your mind,
I have laid eager eyes on the valleys of wild roses that you have planted and watered named 'try again'.

Oh beautiful boy, you are so much more than the rocky hills of anxiety and pitfalls of 'failure' that you think has colored in all of who you are.
You are more than your mistakes.
You are more than your mistakes.
You are more than your mistakes.
Oh ------- ------- you are more than your mistakes.

So with this last exhausted exhale I hand back the membership to the nation state of your beautiful soul.
I realized that it was a visa, perhaps a mere day pass for your season of need.
Perhaps I was just a visitor, enamored by both the light and darkness housed in your beautiful bones.

But it's time for me to return to my home state,
Called Corinthians 13.
Don't be too afraid stop by.

i was recently told that i'm no poet,
that my words don't evoke art or understanding,
that i haven't grown much, so i took that and chewed it
until it fed my insides and turned my eyes outward on
a world that i haven't dug into at all with words left
jumbling around in a brain used for other means,
i've been forcing my hands and heart to mold this world into a better place,
but without my words what capture will i leave behind, what legacy?

i marched with womxn last month, alone and surrounded by 140,000
others who gabbed and growled about a man with tiny
hands who employs those who want to take control of our reproductive rights,
and wants to throw some of us out of the country, and **** us in the streets,
but the white ladies behind me were more concerned with their clever signs
than the native's plight for their land and the black lady's murdered babies and the burkas being ripped off of women trying to buy skirts in a walmart

i guess i have a hard time finding my america in all of this mess -
i'm a white woman, but i didn't vote for trump
does that make me different? does that make me woke?
i want to join arms and resist with everyone who's ever felt
like they're less than because of something they were born being,
but i'm still not quite sure how to shine solidarity without seeking recognition

i think we all desire ego to be stroked, but how can i want for that
when some people just wish to live? i look long and hard at myself everyday
after too many hours reading about the chaos and sadness so readily
accessed at keyboards stroked by too quick fingertips, the tears they
come and the heart lays heavy, but what do i do? i rally other white folks
to march, i try to change their hearts, i explain what being an ally looks like,
i work in the communities that need it most, i love the children who feel alone,
but i wonder how much of this is for me and how much of it is true love

i'm learning, growing, changing always, but fear holds me in a place between
truly giving and giving just to fill my own cup, the world has changed and the
little girl who stood up to bullies still sits inside of my heart, but the bullies are
corporations, and the president, and coworkers, and family members, and
friends at a super bowl party, so i've got to find a way to be strong with my
solidarity no matter who, what, where, why, when, because this matters and i don't
want to be that person standing up only to put it on instagram, no i want to
affect real change, to be a part of history, to truly love all of my fellow human kind

i want to give from a place of caring without condition, a place that sees color, sees faith, sees gender identity, sees ****** orientation, sees *** work, sees disabled folk,
and doesn't pretend that their story is one that i understand and echo because
i have ovaries and know what it feels like to be frightened, no, i can't put my ******
on a pedestal and use it as a badge of courage anymore, it's time to open my heart
and ears and truly be humbled in the honorary process of letting myself learn

just because i've felt real fear, doesn't mean i know anyone else's fear, and the only
way that i will come to be a true empath, a true ally, a true warrior is if i learn to quiet
the voice within my head and listen when others speak from their darkest depths,
i must build my strength, my bonds, my heart, my mind so i can lift those up, serve as a megaphone for the voices quieted by men in uniform and suits, pound the pavement as a truly intersectional, solidarity-filled sister of every man, woman, child, they/them, that has ever felt alone, that has ever wanted for more, that has ever been denied
the privilege that i benefit from just by living, as a white woman in this world

i cut my hair so that another
girl who had only been an earth for a few years could carry
its softness and know someone would
give whatever she was not born with
this world would offer itself to her
cradled in her bed wherever she was
....
i forget the many times
i slept in other people’s homes
or had to leave mine as a child
those many times were coiled and repressed
pushed back into a box like a jack
...
my youth is here present
i mingle with it
and forget it is not always going to be here
and i hear the world is not kind to older womxn
but hear from older womxn those years are the most fruitful; there, they are their most powerful
and like the promised land i want to rush there
the way i used to want to rush towards death
and none of them will do when the early morning hours come
because i just want to be here
cradled in my bed wherever i may be

the small glints engird me
these lightsome keepers
keep no tongue

below their soft palette
there is only space unchallenged
no edict, no menschy thought  

their presence is scintillation
unwavering comfort
attestation
to that in the dark,
there is light

country womxn to sorrow  
and servicewomxn to joy

they make no claims of augury
they are quiet onlookers

silent glisters that surround me
amidst the umbra that stands cavalierly
at the door of the locus

They grip at me  
Two fists snuck into an envelope of soft words
I get “Adjust” instead of its harsher
commanding counterpart “change”
(“comprise”  is in absence in this conversation)

But I see my grandmother smiling
And great grandmother dancing
And all the womxn that have made me
appear from behind the mesquite
emerging from the thick wilderness of time
to transcend
to bear naked their wisdom and  grant me their heart

Their dance swirls within me
Their smile leaps
reaching through flesh
like a ray being emitted from my inner cove
To materialize over my face

And I can sit calmly and confidently
Smile And say “no”
“You cannot dance with me.
Go!”

I will pick up the whispers over the dry patches of land amongst the chaparral

the womxn who births over the earth in a dense city bears the name of “mother” when I call out

The long fabric roll unfolds her story and the those of the ones she calls “brother” and “nana”. Crafty hands and animal loving eyes set to see the sunrise over the North American sky reflect its light over the railroad fabric and back into my eyes

I pick up the radio waves, the ones my cousins, my friends, my sibling and my grandparents heard as they serenaded each other or played music in the living room . It was always static I could never make it out. Buzz. Buzz. Buzz

A static buzz was all I could hear for a very long time.

Then the two bars of 8 beats for salsa; the 4/4 ballads I always giggled and stumbled my way through at parties when the old folks got up to dance, and I would grab my one of my best friends and give it a go

the endless ways in which I was taught to feel the world around me, to weave myself into the music, into words, into this earth and into light begins to carry me through hard seasons,
and I understand now if life is meaningless, If I am only an irrelevant speck in this cosmic ocean the best “****  you” the ultimate undoing of this
is to live a life of meaning, and burn bright and authentically until there is nothing left and this existence is enough

(in truth it has always been enough)