A Eulogy

My Grandmother always tells me that the words I speak could change the world.

But I don’t think she understands.

Sometimes I simply want to be liked more than I want to like the world I’m living in.

Sometimes the weight of not wanting to feel out of place

in a world for which my face and my body isn’t pretty

in the way it wants it to be is overwhelming.

A world for which my voice is too loud

and yet my words never seem loud enough to really be heard.

Doesn’t she see?

Trying to give people a voice in a world full of only the deaf is like

trying to water a bunch of flowers by throwing them into the ocean.

Like trying to warm yourself up by setting yourself on fire.

And I mourn.

I mourn for the countless other girls who dare to open up their mouths

only to have people stare at them,

as though they are just leaking pipes in need of sealing

or a hole worn into the sole of their shoe.

I mourn for the countless opinions kept tucked beneath all those pillows,

The ideas lingering in journals and diaries and the back pages of exercise books

like secret prayers to a God

with whom, I am no longer on speaking terms.

But more than that, I mourn for myself.

I mourn for the woman I promised myself I would become.

I mourn because she has had to wait far too long for me to catch up to her.

The distance between us extended by blank stares and by the boys

who have accused me of misandry when I approached them

with the word ‘feminism’ on my lips.

The distance extended by my own fear

as I am now slowly learning the courage to

forgive myself

My Grandmother always tells me that the words I speak could change the world.

And I’m trying so hard to believe her.