Where is my mind
I wish I could say I remember when it started, I wish I could say I remember a time without it, but I can't. The demons that birthed a lifetime of hostility have always lived here, their whispers a simple echo through my head. An echo breathing life into my anxiety and sucking the breath from my lungs with my depression.
For days I can sit alone craving the feel of another body beside me, or I can sit in a room of people and feel the screams in my head as another person asks me how I am.There's a certain exhaustion that comes from the cross breeding of anxiety and depression, It's a bone deep, soul seeping ache that pulls you down into the pits of hell faster than gravity ever could.
Inside The Woman’s Body
How can they say
that the woman
is not a strong
Creature
That the woman
who holds creation
in the palm of her
hands
is not a Creature
to be feared
How can they say
that the woman
is a fragile, delicate
Rose
That the woman
whose insides clench
and tear and bleed
themselves
is not red enough
to face reality
How can they say
that the woman
is a ghost here
Drifting
That the woman
who screamed for
centuries is not
real
or right in our
fight for relevance
The lesser known Evil
God loves all of his children.
It's why he paints their skies a filtered grey, only wisps of sun allowed to peak through the cheap prison bars.
God loves us all equally.
It's why he sketches our lives like a comic, gunning down the innocent for the purpose of the rising action.
God loves us despite our sins.
It's why when our time comes to enter the gates of heaven he turns us away so that we don't have as long a way to find our peace.
Because while God may love us, the Devil welcomes all with open arms, no questions asked, only interest peaked.
Untitled Part I
"Up to this time in your life, what is your proudest moment?"
It's hard to think, when I know everyone else's answers around me will be materialistic.
Scoring the winning goal in that game when you were young.
Your first A+.
Getting into university.
Graduating university.
It's hard to relate when my answer holds no value to everyday life.
It's hard to find the voice to speak when I'm being overwhelmed by everyone else's life changing moments.
The proudest moment in my life is living.
The proudest moment in my life is when my suicide attempts failed.
The proudest moment in my life is when I finally found the voice I needed to speak up and ask for help.
When I found the strength to finally admit that I deserve help.
I deserve to live and to be alive, not just a shell that can breathe and eat like the rest of us but has no spirit.
So it's hard for me to answer to a crowd of people who have found life at such a young age.
Who have found there happy moment among a web of memories that I have forgotten because they hurt to much to relive.
I sit and wait for the space to quiet down, I sit and wait for my turn to pass over me and for people to forget that I haven't spoken.
For this time I keep my proudest moment to myself, not yet ready to admit that I never found life until almost a quarter of mine was over.
Not For Your Viewing Pleasure
This is my voice, no longer afraid to speak out
not for the people but with them.
I will not speak over them but as a part of them
a part of a puzzle, pieces lost and scattered.
Scattered across the globe like the light shatters,
Broken through a diamond.
Millions, billions of tiny pieces lost and found.
This is my voice, no longer afraid to speak out
for the women and children, young ladies and girls
who keep living and living
in desperation.
Desperation because our nation is holding us back,
is holding our tongues silent, lips... sealed.
Because they are afraid.
They are afraid of the little girl in the ribbon dress,
of the mother with a child on her hip.
Our voices are what they fear.
They fear our ability to stand up... speak out,
to fight them for our rights before theirs.
This is my voice, no longer afraid to speak out
but for far too long kept silent.
Hidden amongst the murmurs of equality, of equal opportunity.
Opportunities to be heard and the hear,
to hear what they felt and to feel what they fear.
Trapped beneath the thick glass ceiling
waiting, waiting, waiting.
This is my voice, no longer afraid to speak out
because we are not property to be owned
to be bought and sold, used and abused.
We are not just mothers or daughters, sisters or wives.
We are human beings demanding to be treated as such.
We will be heard, not just seen.
This is not for your viewing pleasure.
This is to correct and inform you
we will not conform or be controlled.
Our bodies are ours, our minds a palace
guarded against attacks vicious and brutal, physical and verbal.
We are strong and our voices loud,
ringing through your ears like a bell chiming twelve.
This is my voice, no longer afraid to speak out.
We are women and we will no longer be silent or stand down.