Let Them Eat Cake

I write poetry and protest

simultaneously.

They are one and the same to me.

Full of survival and spirit,

my words reach wounds

deeper than any knife could carve.

I beg people to think—

then unthink—

then think it all again,

but different.

For every fact I’m given,

I ask why.

Why must it be this way?

What forces are so unchanging

we dare not stray

from the peer pressure of dead people—

or "tradition," as they say?

We live in a web of choice,

like those choose-your-own-adventure books

we devoured as children.

We craved freedom.

Yet we grow up building cages,

welded from our own limitations,

telling ourselves what we can’t be,

too afraid to dream again—

lest we look foolish

to the rest of the world.

Why?

Let them laugh.

Let them eat cake.

I will define life for myself.

Let me be a book to be read

by those who wish to see.