feeling powerless and small

Feeling powerless and small

Soft and vulnerable

Who are you to succeed

When do many others have failed

But have they failed?

Did they further the cause of equal rights?

Yes

See it as a great work

A labor in the vineyard

Rather than a goal

A finish line

Toil

Labor

Struggle

These efforts develop character

These strains create muscles

I don't have to overthrow thousands of years of oppression

I just need to learn about it myself

To see the strings and binds and cages that have been woven and closed around me

I first need to free myself

Then freeing others will be come naturally

I feel sad and weak and vulnerable

Open and weeping

Raw and excavated

I hear the stifling of my sister's

Their choking

Their straining

Against unjust bonds

I feel their collective agony and oppression

Their frustration

Things are not as they should be

It should not be this way

I feel wounded

Trodden down

Pushed down

Oppressed

The devil

Whispers in my ear

That is what you deserve

That is what you get

For leaving the garden,

For tempting Adam

You threw it all away

For curiosity

For wonder

For a possibility

But you could never have anticipated

How awful it could be

How terrible I could make your life

I have used every means available to me

To crush you

To wound you

To grind you and bind you

Stuff you in a cage

Silence you

Rape you

I have taken everything from you

And yet,

Here I am

Despite decades of oppression

Despite thousands of voices

Discounting me

Drowning me

Dismissing me

You're crazy!

You're being too sensitive!

Don't be so emotional!

Calm down!

Don't get so worked up!

You're not in your right mind.

Despite layers and layers of oppression,

I feel the whispers

The faintest breath

Which tells me you're still alive

Deep, down, under all of that

You're still divine

They haven't been able to crush you, to obliterate you

They have only been able to shroud you

To wrap you up in so many layers

Layers of shame and brokenness

Wickedness and deceit

But they cannot snuff you out

Because you are divine

You are eternal

And nobody can take that away from you

The life and divinity

The spark of hope and joy

It cannot be extinguished

It is

I am that I am

My light will never go out

Though it may be shuttered

Though the winds of oppression blow

My light remains

Burning ever brighter

The contempt and shame 

You pile upon me

Only serves as fuel for my all consuming fire

I will burn

I will burn

I will burn

Eternally

And your false labels

They will be my fuel

The fuel that I will use to burn it all down

Fire will cleanse

Me,

The world,

And you.

You and all of your false priests and dogma

Will be consumed

By my fire of rage

All that's left will be purified 

By my fire

Sanctified

You think you can fool me?

No, you are the fool

For thinking I would not fight back

Bury me, oppress me, lie to me

But I already know

You can't unsee what you've seen

I know there's more to me than anything you've said or done

I feel it

Deep, deep down

In the most basic and primitive parts of me

Is a tigress

Crouching

Bound and bleeding

But her heart is still beating

Beating with power 

Beating down through the generations of women

We share that collective heartbeat

It calls us

It reminds us

Who we really are

And we're coming

For you