This World was Not Built for Us

I was born into this world being told I was not enough,

Each step I took half a length behind my counterparts,

I was told to be good and be pretty,

Be kind and be small,

I was told the world suffers sin because of my mother’s mother,

That the gift of creating new life is a curse, not a miracle

A burden, I carry because Eve tempted Adam,

And not that Adam was weak, not that he took equal part,

But that Eve, solely by her existence, created sin in a man’s perfect world,

I carried that knowing and gave my body away to every man who asked, or didn’t,

To every man that took back his right- my fault.

I grew up as an object, not a self.

Embarrassed by the way my lungs rose and fell,

Guilt rushing through my blood with each heart beat,

Closing my throat a little at a time.

Until I was no more than a china doll,

Grinning as I imagined smashing my glass body into the ground,

Over and over and over,

Rejoicing in the idea of my brain shattering upon impact,

Yearning to rip my limbs apart, to tear my body into shreds piece by piece, 

So it could no longer be yours for the taking,

Would smashing my car against a wall at three hundred miles per hour be sufficient to replicate the rage I feel inside?

Swallowed so deeply I cannot imagine its release without my own destruction.

Do you know what it feels like to be a woman in this world?

How suffocating it is? How invalidating it is?

Of course, I am emotional when I try to tell you,

You cannot imagine the storms I have inside me,

I spent so long with an aversion to the flame with the fear that I would burn the whole damn place down in my own release.

I am afraid of my own power, you should be too.