Auszehrung | a transgenerational poem

a woman’s violence

reveals itself

in her reflection

*

don’t look at me

when I am looking at myself

in the mirror

*

felt like a crime

that happened

only in her body

*

when she spoke to herself

without using words

and her body became

a weapon against itself

*

how could this belong to me

*

I’ve studied women’s faces

women’s bodies across the glass

and I can’t protect myself

from what I’ve absorbed