Treating people
With the cold loneliness
You are swimming in
You have grown thick skin
And decided coldness
Is the only way to live
Other people
Who have not yet acquired
Your strength for the cold
Are failures in your eyes

You throw ice daggers
At them
As you impose your hard-earned prize
Power over them
Making them sink further
Down
And less likely
To add their gift as
A contribution
To humanity

You don’t realize
There’s another way to live
Where you
Use your own mind
Your unique brand of light
And warmth
To succeed and
To connect to everyone
So that you don’t have
To get mad at the world
For the cold loneliness

My new dentist asks me if I grind my teeth
Not on purpose I say
It must be while you sleep
The motion releases a soothing chemical in your brain

I know this must be true
That even as I sleep I can’t
Comfortably fit into the mold of normal
The edges that stick out the sides of the mold
Are the things that make
Teeth grind
Hair twirl
Skin pick
Feet rub
Hands tap
Lips bit

My body knows my mind is never at home
And it is trying to reassure it
Everything is ok
I am enough
I am home everywhere I walk
Other people’s opinions
Are not cages
That can trap you and take away your freedom
You are in control of all this

Twirled my hair
As long
As I remember
So much that I don’t control
When I do it
My body just starts on auto pilot
3 decades of entwining strands
Between my fingers
Because the feel
Of the smooth straight
Reassures me that my body and my mind
Are mine
When around others
I curl my fingers
Up through my hair
Onto my scalp
To remind my body
To relax
I still belong to myself
Other people’s opinions
Are not cages that can trap me
And take away my freedom

I think of all the women
I am made of
A long line of survival
That stretches back
200,000 years
Each one passing
Her ability to survive
On to her daughter
And I wonder
How many of them felt
She had no control over her future.
That her happiness
Rested completely in the musings of men.
Is this why
It comes so easy to me
To remain quiet
And let men decide?
200,000 years of procreation
Selecting women
Who held their tongues

No
The women I am made of
Had to fight off
Sabre tooth tigers
And figure out
How to make bread for the first time
A woman
Saw a plant
And thought
I’ll grind that up and make it into a paste and bake it
That woman must have known
She was the equal
To a man

It is obvious
That I learned
To be docile
In this lifetime
A product of this culture
I was born into
My demureness a byproduct
That I am trying to shed
Because all those women
Who gave birth
To a woman
That didn’t die
From disease
Or sabre tooth tigers
Or eating raw yeast
That led to me
Deserve to be heard