This poem was first published in the 2016 In The Words Of Women International Anthology. Available for purchase here.

There.

What am I supposed to do?

Caught in wires unbroken

webs made of steel

barbed wire

unlock me of chains

that I don’t even know

the way out of.

It is violence

when you look at me

make any remark

about my body

critique any part

of my

self.

It is violence

when you talk over me

pretend I do not know

ask me to check my answers.

It is violence

when you

mispronounce my name

violence when you

structure

hierarchically

a ceiling over my head.

Glass or not

I

need to be

under the sky

opening expanding

breathing

in and out

my mother’s tongue

my sister’s tail

raging

loving

tumbling backwards

bed flower beds

wrap my arms

around

stanzas so

mispronounced

so formless

with words

hardly sensible

that they can’t stand to

hold themselves up.

We’ll use each other

to crutch

and somehow

stagger limping back

to the planet

we came from

and hold

those moments

embrace

those feelings

choose to

live

already there.

I am

living

somewhere

already

there.