I Don't Feel Like a Woman

I don’t feel like a Woman:

Because Woman is Freedom,

And I feel the shackles upon my feet

Placed at my birth.

The umbilical cord was no sooner cut,

My first breath barely filled my tiny lungs.

They announced my death sentence:

Tears rolled from my mother’s eyes.

I don’t feel like a Woman:

Because there are women who live in poverty,

Whose liberties were stripped from them

By ravenous men.

Men, who have stripped me down too.

Bare-bone, stomachs against the wall.

They say they have consent, that I am free;

Oppression feels a lot like Men’s freedom.

I don’t feel like a Woman:

Because envy feels like those mean girls

Who said I wasn’t pretty enough for boys

So they could be honored by male affection.

I thought my life was to marry: be merry,

appeasing, and gracious to my husband.

Sapphic was a word I learned when I met

Divine Femininity: Love, Wisdom & Beauty.

I don’t feel like a Woman:

I’m terrified of having a child, a divine right,

Because men are too immature;

They want to pollinate but never to see me bloom.

They say war and machines have more rights

To our bodies as they blow holes into

Women & children, but an embryo has

A right to a life of violence and war.

I don’t feel like a Woman

Because I feel all the women around me dying.

Once a month we shed blood, but

Every day we have shed blood and tears.

Cleopatra once said

“a man will never find my body,”

And I wish to never be found by men again.

Make me a virgin, and I will repent.

This life doesn’t feel like Woman.