My mouth is an open wound for the flies

Honey, let me tell you what your eyes refuse to see

When I smile at the man who dares touch my skin,
All my insides turn upside down
My ribcage strain to hold out anger
My chest is empty of breaths and full of violence
A curse has latched itself into my bones ─
It peels. It burns.

Beyond my Cheshire smile is a war
Between words I want to say and the world that won’t let me
My heathen tongue is shut by the thing that you call “joke”
So I bite down a wrathful scream
Swallow a coil of sorrow,
Bury it deep in a mass grave of apologies

For being a woman who can’t fight.

Honey, you see ─ or perhaps you don’t
There is no safe place my kind
Against the devil and you, the accessory to the crime
Who thinks a touch,
A tap,
A graze,
A pinch
Is just being “playful”

I am not a toy.

I am bones and flesh held hostage
By prejudice and wealthy monsters
Who use my lack for their gain ─
Leave your pretense on my doorstep
For I have long died
My smile ─ no, my mouth
Is now an open wound for the flies

Open your eyes.

---

I know that I said I won’t let current news and affairs affect me. That I would take care of my mental health first. But there are just those days when people’s stupidity triggers the anger in you. This is one of those moments.

You! Yes, you.

You! Yes, you.

You who are probably wearing a little black dress or a loose shirt and skinny jeans or your grandmother’s overalls.

Yes, you.

I want you to know that you can spit them now. Your hatred, your frustration, your anger. You are not a refugee from the past. You are here, now – breathing, living.

When you happen to pass a dark alley and you hear the whistle of lust, it’s okay to fight your might. Do not allow that man to define you in fragments. Skin, neck, legs, breasts and thighs— as if you are a piece of meat that can be pulled apart. I will join you in particicution for we are more than the gates of heaven that opens in one thrust. We are capable of giving them hell.

But, remember, you are also free to take flight. It is not your fault to tremble and feel your body shake. When the outside world and your mind are in equal darkness, it’s okay to cry. This world is cruel and respect is nothing but an amputated speech. I understand your distrust.

I’ve heard it too, passed on to me in soundless words with their lips hardly moving. Yes, they do not touch us but their eyes take off our clothes faster than their hands do. They claim respect but they reduce our worth to the size of an hourglass, a number, a measurement, a color. A rape joke with a disclaimer “do not take it personal”.

You! Yes, you.

Spit it out, that acrid taste of misogyny and sexism. Be angry and be frustrated because this is not what you deserve. Nolite te bastardes carborundorum.

---

This one’s inspired by Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, a harrowing story chronicling women’s struggle and survival set in a strict patriarchal society. The book is more that just a dystopian classic, it’s a warning to a not-so-distant future.