The Power Of No.

Once, I bowed like willows in a storm,
curtsied to every request, every norm.
Tongue tied with ribbons of yes and please,
a servant to everyone's fleeting ease.

But now—oh now, I’ve tasted steel.
A sharpened No with a serpent’s heel.
It slides from lips with velvet grace,
a quiet thunder, a hard embrace.

There’s a fire in the turning down,
a crown forged in refusal's frown.
No, not today. No, not for you.
No, because I simply wanted to.

Is it petty, this pleasure I take?
Watching expectations bend and break?
Perhaps. But I am no longer meek—
I am the storm they dared to seek.

I sip on silence after the blow,
a toast to the gall of letting go.
A choir of sighs trails where I stand—
a goddess with a “no” in hand.