We feel embarrassed.
Hold their missed calls like shrapnel along our spine.
We scold our misjudgment.
Feel silly for loving,
wish their apathy away with laughter.
We should've laughed harder.
Been brighter.
Uprooted their childhood.
Buried it farther
Yes master.
We are embarrassed to reach for things.
Our hands so small,
disappearing up our sleeves.
He's just tired
He's just working.
He's just scared
We fashion excuses like the barrel of an old war rifle.
Ready to aim and fire at anyone who calls our bluff.
Please don't call my bluff.
I am already teetering on self-confidence
Already teetering on this new found feminism.
When I am warm to the touch.
What will they say of me then?
When I am bent boned?
When am I teeth mashed?
When I am queen fallen?
How will I face my daughters?
When I've allowed such violation?
When I've allowed their boots on my fine Persian rug.
Their stomping?
My stomping.
Their words?
All mine.
Because I allowed it.
Because I allowed it.
Skin softer than lamb.
Womb bigger than an orchard.
Still want them inside me.
Still want touch so badly
I'm willing to forgive them for the way that they touch me.
Because they touch me like plastic.
Like fools gold.
Like a twenty something year old boy
who doesn't know an antique from a gun hole.
Who will speak of me in decades to come?
Of the women,
Loved and lost.
Of stars fallen.
Apologies Expired.
We are the wounds.
That will turn to scars.
And even those,
We’ve managed to make fashionable.