Explaining my Rage to my Mother
We are sitting at the table and he brings up abortion.
I freeze, lockjawed and anxious
listening to him poorly interpret my body,
listen to him explain my femininity in blood and organs and holy words.
I think,
He might as well have me strip naked
He might as well lay me on this table,
with your lit pine cone scented candles and lace linens,
take his steak knife and fork which
he holds nonchalantly,
all the while explaining away my freedoms.
He may as well stick his utensils into my skin,
Cut out the parts he doesn’t like.
He says as much.
He thinks as much.
When I hear men talk about abortion my heart stops.
The child I have never had and the child I have thought of wanting gasps,
shock flairs within the ghosts of my womb.
Why?
What life have these men carried?
What burdens have these men endured?
while raping and endangering
our population of feminine power, I watch
Strong women being tied down by seeds
sowed in their stomachs by unwelcomed farmers
It worries me.
It worries me, mom,
That you think he should be allowed to share such
dangerous ideas in our family home, at our family table
It worries me that my sixteen year old sister is sitting next to me
Hearing a grown man discuss her body as if it were public matter.
I don’t EVER want her to believe her body belongs to
Anyone except herself, mom.
I don’t care if it’s thanksgiving,
I don’t care that he has a million excuses as to why,
He is uneducated and terrible with conversation
I am bleeding at our table and you are angry with my pain.
I poor out to you like a faucet,
endless in my explanations and pleading for basic respect
I am met with a stone wall you have built meticulously, one
where all of the women before you hang by their necks
killed by the same words you are allowing to be said
right here, right now.
I do not want to end up like these women
I do not want to end up nodding and agreeing while a man
Dissects my body in conversation and justifies to me
why I am a piece of livestock.
I do not want to be a blank faced and empty headed hate mongerer,
A violent and hatefully delusional hypocrit
I don’t want to stand up and clap any more
when men offer me the worse standards of living and chalk it up to being
Generous, and extraordinary
I want accountability.
I want education.
I want the barren mind of men to be filled with
Flowers and lush green gardens, wild plants
Nourished from perspective and empathy and understanding
that we are not equal.
you use your “big strong” muscles
To parade my rights to me as if they are a privilege
which you have so generously allowed me
Stop.
Stop.
Stop.
Someone needs to stand up for my little sister,
Someone needs to stand up for the girl from that documentary
who was kidnapped and raped for seventeen years by her DAD
Someone needs to stand up for the fourteen year olds and eleven year olds and seven year olds
And it starts right here.
It starts by addressing and acknowledging the bigotry
So that we can start to overcome it
For the little girls born after us
For the world we have created of churning women over like cattle and locking them in
with suburban homes and picket fences
sealed in place with a marriage license.
I feel like a caged animal in a zoo
for naked men itching their small members to gawk at
and i’m tired, mom,
And I'm not going to stop fighting until
this place feels like home again.
