Everyday I doll myself up, make myself socially acceptable
I wear lipstick and eyeliner so
no one knows I feel like the stuff that comes out of a dog’s
a** and a person’s mouth
I wear Spanx under short skirts that have old men
trailing my back, whistling, calling me over like a
two cent hooker with stretch marks and a trailer home
like I’m already pregnant with their third
Just because I’m “brutally honest,” my legs don’t open
at the count of three, and I diss males on a daily
I’m a feminist when really
I am Hosanna
I have people who think they know me just because
I told them my bra size, the reason I have no father,
and how often I wash my hair
People who think they know me because
we both have abandonment issues, know some level of
poverty, and know what one bullet hole can do to a beating heart
There are folks who stick me with a style
but Goodwill and Thrift Town don’t have seasons
they have worn down sweaters and patches of designer jeans
that made a rich girl feel like she was giving back
And like the Earth
I change. I bleed every month, and cry every full moon
so how the hell can’t I change and what makes me so different from the Earth that
I
live on when I am a life cycle
I am changing and growing,
thriving and dying
I’m my own scientist
and I’ve observed my luck is as thin
as the hair used for a middle aged man’s combover
And people are obsessed with being natural but aren’t happy with my
natural body unless I have perky C-cups, toned (could be flat) a**, hourglass
figure, and enough lovers or booty-calls to circle the equator twice
As a female I’m supposed to be kind and polite, apron
like a corset around my waist, flour still white on my hands
when politicians are concerned with money and
how is the food we eat going to stop the waters from rising
the guns from shooting relentlessly, the animals, trees, and plants
from rotting beneath a beating sun
how is it going to stop the earth from dying
But for now
I can walk and breath pollution and I don’t have a tumor
the size of a full grown fetus stuck to my chest
I am living
I am growing
I am