Festering

The burden of gender is heavy,

The burden of women is like thick skirts

Wrapped around my ankles

Tugged tightly at my waist.

It's croaking up flower petals

And offering a sweet smile.

An endless to-do, chores that

Smother my energy for passions

Till I coma inside myself alone.

Lazy breaths pull me to sleep

Restless thoughts of everything

Yank me back to wake in night.

It's endless planning and menus,

Cooking, scrubbing cleaning,

Least I get caught slipping.

Least I make stress.

To pass the load is to eat stale bread

And slimey squash, to let the garden waste.

Bitter days on end, medicine that drowns me

In the pressures of a world made to eat

Everything good within me and feed it to men

Who take, take, take and seldom give.

It's climbing a cliff that collapses beneath

My fingers and hands to sand as I slide

Back down in the festering touch of the sun.

Should I think to rest, should I think to wave a flag,

I will surely be faulted. Strung up like the

Laundry I have yet to do.

Left to become a dead husk of corn

And forgotten all the same.