Husbands and Bombs

That night when you realize that your husband is afraid of you Lying in bed and hearing his plans for your life How you will get a job any job that makes money will do Something respectable maybe Just pick from the approved list of things women should be Soft and sweet Maybe I can sell candy Spoon feed you medicine Take a payment Caretaker, mother Oh, wait that doesn’t pay enough Not when I am a bomb A car crash A threat to the system Seller of truths you do not want to hear I am the hand on the ax right before it swings The finger on the trigger right before it’s pulled The whisper in the night that terrifies and threatens I am the crier in the darkness Speaker of hard truths Knower of inevitable catastrophes And he wants me to bid myself low And maybe I should be ashamed of myself For not wanting the easy normalcy of womanhood The little corner he would give me In which to find a cage of my choosing I guess the problem is that I am not ashamed I was told to cover up from a young age Cover your body so men won’t want it Cover your thoughts so men won’t feel threatened Cover your emotions so men won’t have to feel bad But that meant I couldn’t want my body And I couldn’t think my thoughts And I couldn’t feel my emotions Pretending things don’t exist isn’t the same thing as them not existing And all those thoughts and all those emotions and all that body Waited unchanged under the coolly composed surface Waited and simmered and undulated and moved in me Until they could wait no more Will wait no more Remember that bomb? I was built to destroy cages and men and institutions and societies And he will tell me to calm down That he didn’t mean it that way But that is only because explosions cannot be undone He fears the damage but not the blast I can be put back in another cage with a few simple words About responsibility and family and love Because all anyone ever wants is to be loved And once they know what you want They will use it against you every time Especially husbands that lie in beds and plan your life So that they can be unafraid