catalyst | a poem

we were born and all hell broke loose within you

*

my face will eventually be my own

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I continuously failed to live up to ideals

I never knew I had

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boys expected simplicity

I diluted myself

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their bodies cut in three parts

mind, heart and crotch

I couldn’t get out of the bottom drawer

my mind, heart and crotch in a knot

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I thought I was doing my own thing

without realising that I had absorbed

my ancestors’ worlds

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sometimes I only understood what yes meant and entailed

once I had whispered it

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and I hadn’t said it in my own voice

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I wonder when all these artificial voices started to come out of my mouth

and who did they belong to

and why did they feel so necessary and innate