Body

 And my body says:

there's a fucking cosmos in here

suns stars galaxies comets

you should know

I am so much more than 

a storehouse for your trauma or

a battleground for your conflicts or

the bearer of your scars or 

the carrier of your soul

so don't pull your reductive objectifying imperialist bullshit on me

I am not something to be colonised by

whatever good intentions you have this month

or your warped ideas 

about purity and perfection. 

Let's just say

I know all your sleights-of-hand

your baiting and switching

we both know who you are

and we both know that you should be

on your knees

sinking into me

worshipping at my feet

and howling at my very miraculousness. 

Aftermath

In panic

I ran

from one place to another

to another

to another,

from one person

to the next

and the next. 

I took to hiding

in the spaces between words - 

silence a temporary refuge. 

I took to disappearing

into the slivers of stillness

between moments,

those lulls in which

no-one was noticing -

(there are more of them than you think) - 

putting off the inevitability

of emergence. 

I was always going to have to come out,

eventually. 

Table-Turning

 I want us to rise up and start a war -

Or at least to cause a commotion.

I want us to go to town on a Saturday night

And start a fight. 

I want us to rain down blows 

And cause men to fear. 

I want us to lose our shit in public. 

Long have we borne, cared, endured. 

Long have we nursed, tended, understood. 

It's time the tables were turned.