An Ode to White Politicians (Who Think They Own My Body)

My mental health
is worth less than your acquired wealth.
Price tags on my wellness
are the reason for your bonus.
Your pockets are so deep
we could stack the bodies of
the sick
the dying
and the poor,
you still wouldn’t feel the weight of their lifelessness.
Our life isn’t this
burden or disease.
How dare you make us out to be
the enemy to your spawn’s success.
We are just children of mothers
wanting life free from duress.
These lungs expand.
Our hearts demand
the same steady rhythm as yours,
but our health is a chore.
The white man said there will be no more
access to affordable care.
How dare
we ask for your assistance.
You punish us for giving you life;
the womb that grew your savage heart
has become the greatest part
of your willful ignorance.
My uterus
was not created by hands of the divine
for your political governance.
This body is mine.
When will I stop being punished
my tits,
my wits
or my anxiety fits.
Those fits are actually me suffocating
remembering his cold hands pressed around my neck.
When will the upward trek
for equality
be a celebration march of finally being seen.
You listen with deaf ears,
you have for years,
shouting blah blah blah
while I cry
begging for patience
as I heal and I mend from the
trauma inflicted by your fellow man.
This burden runs deeper
than what you’re able to see.
When I look in the mirror
I see shattered pieces of who I used to be.
My trauma has taken the wheel,
I relinquished control
the day he stole
literally everything from me.
There has to be a better way.
Because if one day
your unborn daughter
whispers through trembling lips
the hardest truth, this
admitting she was raped
I hope you take her new fate
into delicate hands
and meet her with the understanding
you didn’t bother showing me.
Why can’t you see?
Her shattered heart
beats in the same rhythm as mine.
There is nothing fine about this.
Her existence is worth more
than the price tag you put on her uterus.
before the day she was born.
I know you’re new to this,
but being born a woman isn’t the burden
you’ve made us out to be.
I have lived ashamed of my being,
but by being a woman
in a modern man’s world
I’ve been bestowed the honor
of paving the way for
young women like your daughter
to stand in their truths
and no longer fear
what it means to survive
because all survivors are welcome
right here.