Power Poetry

Overflow

I feel the sadness
Choking my body
And it sliding up
Through my nostrils,
Down my throat
And towards my belly button
Mixing with the water
That makes up most of me.

Fighting is all I know.
Resisting is my nature.
But Lord God!
I feel myself weakening
More and more
As I wait to be rescued
From something
No one sees
Is killing me.

Does anyone care
That I’m dying
Right in front of them?

After all the waiting,
I do the one thing
That I swore
I’d never do.

Surrender
To the overflow.

At first it hurts.
You know,
Like a
Motherfucking bitch.

The overflow tightens
Its hold on me,
Force feeding me
Depression,
Anxiety,
And rolling waves
Of PTSD.

I remember
Every time
I was gaslit
By someone
I poured
My heart out to.

I recall
The fear
The anger
The exhausting annoyance
That came from
Each time
A perverted asshole
Insistently
Sexually harassed me
With his words
His mouth
And his voice
Reeking of privilege
He knows he can abuse
Against me.

The skin of my face
Would burn
In memory
Of every time
Someone refused
To gender me correctly
And be a decent person
Because transphobia
Is synonymous
To free speech
And “being themselves”,
Because their refusal
To see and respect me
As anything
Other than a “female”
Not even a girl or woman
Honors some god-given truth
Protects feminism
The “natural family”.
But in reality,
It only protected
Bullshit,
Bigoted bitches, and
Cunts who can’t
Come correct.

I remembered,
I recalled,
The memories
Replayed
Until my heart stopped.
The overflow
Consumed me
Until there was nothing
Of the old me left.
Whatever I fought against
Was always a part of me.
It was just now joined
To my everything
Without any fight.

Now the real healing
Is about to commence.

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Power Poetry

Sad and Real

I choose to be sad and real
Instead of happy but fake
Internally gaslit
So that other people
Are comfortable in their bullshit
While force feeding it
Into my mouth.

It looks like cooking
And waiting for the food
To burn just right.

It feels like being annoyed at roommates
Doing whatever they want and
Not washing a wine glass
That they know you use
And had also drank from.

It sounds like the fire of the stovetop
Burning hotter and hotter
As the depression swallows me up
In its suffocatingly comforting waters.

When the food is done
The leftovers are heated up
And the juice is poured
Into a recycled Pure Leaf tea bottle,
I am just simply being
In my sadness.

I accidentally
Made my roommate’s
Pad fall into the toilet
And all I did
Was wipe off the water
And put it back on the
Medicinal container.

It dried and looks like
Nothing happened.

They won’t know
What had happened.
I mean they aren’t good
With telling me things either.

They’re even worse
With not noticing
When I need someone to
Be there for me.

Sad and real
Is not a trend
A hashtag
Or a movement.

I simply am being
What I am
At this moment,
Even if it means
Doing it alone.

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