Wet, Vast, Slow, Open
What lies between my legs
Takes, far more than it gives.
Turns my body from an
Open palm to a closed fist.
This battlefield between my thighs remains a
Bleeding hole all of the worst things
About myself have escaped from.
That is what they scream at us,
That is what echoes off the walls of our skulls,
That is what they hope turns us into
Self proclaimed dust.
To them, us women are made of
Glitter and eyelashes and halos
Of wombs and softness and mystery
Until we aren’t
Then we become chipped glass and
Bent wire and jagged fingernails.
Shoving their abuse up into us and spilling every last drop of
Their triumph,
They try to convince us they are worth far more
Than our hope and broken windows.
We can taste the lies on their lips the
Ones that will drop ripe from their smile like hanging fruit from an old tree
Here these lies slither in front of a jury.
And the black hole between my legs sucks my voice away
For it tells me that too many men have played victim to
The law for it to mean anything to anyone.
We are sick of applying chameleon skin to our cheeks
Hoping if we are held up to the sunlight and scrutinized
All they see is the dirty brick wall behind us.
This Earth is where we would rather be the background than the
Main attraction.
We are tired of disguising our pepper spray as lipstick
And it not mattering anyway
Because both will make us targets.
Us women are fed up with pretending we are grateful
For this 'natural' genocide on our human bodies
This bullet hole in us
Is where the war hits hardest.
My mothers, my daughters, my sisters
My past, my future, my now
There is always hope
Before the junction of our legs was a black hole
It was a star.
Copyright © Iris Blade | Year Posted 2018
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