writing is the only space
that you didn’t request access to
*
writing is the evaporation of a physical form
*
you only want to hear me speak
so that you can cut off my words mid-air
*
women’s bodies adapted to men’s bodies
I got caught in-between
*
furniture took on the shapes of men
mornings smelled like men’s apertures
their bodies were leaking, getting rid of themselves
*
silence had a woman’s body
the tiptoeing toes cracked, effervescent
fingers self-destructive, nihilistic
*
she walked through the night to be touched
to feel like herself
to not become an insect
a pestilence, love gone acidic
to not stink of men’s tongues
*
her body distorted itself
into stillborn desires
she was not coming to life
and he stopped touching her
because she invited death into her body
take it all
and he had been sick of death for a long time
he had already seen too much of it
*
and I understood quickly that if hungry men
are not fed by women they think they own
morals fly straight out of the window
*
I learned that a man’s lust is a burden
handed over, imposed, hollowing out
*
I learned that a woman’s lust is non-existent
but what was I then
I overfed myself
*
what men did openly
women imagined in hiding
*
I poured my body on the street
shrouded myself in foreign shame
teaching me, then silencing me
you made me boil
added all ingredients
discarded your sins
*
and when I was finished you told me
everything about you is wrong
*
touch was never what I imagined it to be
*
I couldn’t find myself in my own body
because you were everywhere
*
you conveyed to me that I was obligated
to open up my body politely
*
say yes with a smile on my face
shutdown for my sake
*
give myself away
*
that I needed to be dutiful
when men were forceful
*
taught me
buried me
*
but I have always been alive
and safeguarded my language
Croque-Melpomene 