Here we go,

Down Alice’s rabbit hole

I drink the potion

To make me sane

That very same potion that drowns my pain

This wound I have …

It’s bleeding

I’m hemorrhaging

How can it heal?

I haven’t stopped drowning

But you’re reluctant smile makes me aware of your discomfort

I’m a proper young lady,

with Southern manners to spare

So I’ll quiet my struggle

I’ll politely silence my screams

r-e-l-i-e-f

I see it in your eyes

“Ah, normalcy…”

“Ah, things are okay…”

My battle scars upset you

My blood concerns you

And when I awaken in the middle of the night

And I hear a scream that shatters me

Only to realize it is me

The remembrances of my losses

My violations

We pretend to be asleep

We want normal

We want calm

Didn’t I tell you you’re in the eye of my hurricane?

I was told I was a goddess

I was told I was a warrior

I was told I was a force of nature to be reckoned with

And I’ve left the herd

I’m the blackest of sheep

I will never be a soccer mom

I will never again willfully blend in so I don’t stand out

My leggings have leather and lace

I am anything but basic

I am essential

You will not dictate the makeup on my skin

You will not dictate the tattoos on my skin

No one has any rights to this body I am in, except me, myself and I

Fuck Lilly Pulitzer

When I can aspire to win a Pulitzer

I’m not safe

And I don’t wanna be

The girl who obeyed the rules

The girl who dressed the way she was told to dress

The girl who never cut her pretty blonde hair because another person didn’t like it

The girl who kept the secrets of the atrocities done to her

That girl is now a woman

And of this woman, you should feel fear

The eye of my storm

I never knew what that meant

Now I know …

I am Dissent.

I’m the Alpha now.

I’ve got the gasoline

I’ve lit the match

Look at all the pretty traditions burn

I’m told as a woman

I ought to be seen and not heard

Things have always been this way

… not anymore

Because I kiss girls

Moonlight is my religion

Baptismal waters washed away a sin I never knew wasn’t mine

Tears cried into teddy bears,

While it was denied

Tears cried into pillows,

While it was denied

Thirty-two years I’ve breathed air on this earth,

The lies, the denials, all along the party lines

The grandfather clocks chimes, “Time’s Up…”

I retweet #MeToo

The gasoline and matches light a fire,

The flames, now an inferno

Light it up

You cannot hide in shadows

We’ll smoke you out

You groomed us

You hunted us

We were prey

Not anymore

We are the predators

We are the Army

I am a Soldier in a War I didn’t start but I’ll sure as hellfire finish …

Archimedes said, “Give me a place to stand on and I’ll move the Earth…”

I’m shattered.

Yet I’ve never felt so whole.