Dear Queen Jezebel,
Your name has fallen through the thickets of white male history
But I think you are painted unfairly.
For you were a strong female character
In a time when they were frowned upon.
No man would tell you what to do
You held power in your strong wrists
In your condescending smile
In your waterfall hips.
You were brutal
But you you showed the world that you would not be messed with
You were not merely valuable for your ***
For your ability to pop out children.
You were revolutionary
You installed fear in the men who did everything they could
To cut you to pieces.
Maybe we are not too different
As my ex-boyfriend repeatedly told me to shut my feminist mouth
And have *** with him.
History repeatedly ****** you
Paints you as a *** symbol
Rather than a strategic businesswoman and monarch.
You knew what you were doing
And I follow your lead
They will never love us
We, Jezebel, are for them to make pets out of
We are here to show them
How the mighty
Have fallen.

Hi Ma, it's me
Me, equivalent to the extra ten pounds
That have molded so perfectly to round out my hips and belly.
Me, equivalent to everything society wants to shut out
Fat, free, female.
Me, becoming ever so used to flashing my intelligence
Instead of the skin everyone either wants to see too much of
Or encourages me to hide.
No...everything's alright
Everything, like the fact that my girl friends and I
Pass around stories of ****** abuse and harassment over tea.
Everything, like being told my worth is based on
How many men I have slept with.
Everything, like being told I should feel repentant
For no longer being a ******.
Okay, talk to you later.
I won't talk to you about
How I have no interest in the "ring by spring" phenomenon.
I won't talk to you about
How, at a Christian school, LGBTQ+ students are given a dwindling voice
As if the fire in their words will burn down a failing hierarchy.
I won't talk to you about
How hard it is to make anyone take me as seriously
As they do my male friends
Same opinions, same demeanor, different parts.
I love you
Love is supposed to be unconditional
So why am I encouraged to work so viciously to earn it
As if there is not enough to go around?
Love is supposed to benefit both parties
So why, as a woman, do I still get treated like my partner's property
As it is still custom for a father to give his daughter away to another man?
Love is supposed to be understanding
So why are **** victims still chastised by society
If they appreciate a trigger warning?
Bye.

To the woman who said
"The reason we have seen a rise in mental illness over the past fifty years
Is because of how we choose to view situations."
As if the pessimism I inherited from generations of pluralist forward thinkers
Has lead to the shattering of my carefully composed facade
To the way I burn myself at the stake everyday
Because I feel my flesh scorching beneath me
To the way I wrestle with my own mind
Late into the night
Contemplating if ending my life would make the bitterness I pretend not to taste
Any sweeter
To the way I hate that I do this
So I am a ball of clay
Becoming more and more compact with self-destructive energy
To the way I do not want to die
But want to stop suffering
Want to stop having images of people like earrings dangling off the edge of bridges
That haunt me in my slumber
So sleep becomes scarce
Scared
Scary.
I would never choose to live with the 4 AM panic attacks
The touch that seers my skin
The crippling bouts of depression
The highs that are never happy
But I hold myself to a higher standard
Than believing this is self-imposed
If I could choose to change this
I would in a moment
But until it passes
I will deal with it accordingly
I will wake up and face the music
Rush in headfirst singing
Because I have stopped blaming myself for the things I cannot change
But can largely control
And I think it's time this world does the same.

They tell you to eat from the hand that hits you
The particles of your soft cheek smashing through the atmosphere
The first time I felt this in public
I was fifteen
Two drunk men leaned over the counter
At my first job, they told me explicitly
How they would twist and contort my body
To please their selfish desires.
Room full of customers and coworkers
Managers who watched this happen
And still told me I was moving too slowly
These men wanted me to move faster, too
Wrap my hips around their waste
Submit to the items they wanted to spank me with
But I couldn't move fast enough
I went to the back of the store and cried.

They tell you to eat from the hand that hits you
Growing up I knew a girl
Whose boyfriend repeatedly came back for her
Thrusting his dark matter into her bones
Even when she said no
Throwing her around like a rag doll
Until she couldn't take it anymore
And decided to try throwing herself off a bridge instead
Everyone at school called her crazy
Even though she was being gutted of her existence
From the inside out.
Society said
All she was good for was ******* and blowing smoke
That she let a man break her body in half
And define exactly who she was.

They tell you to eat from the hand that hits you
You look into yourself and wonder
Why you can't see the light that used make your eyes lanterns.
We're taught that we must have perfectly chiseled bodies
To be welcome mats for men to slap their stamp of approval
Yet if they walk all over you
You are nothing.
When you're thirteen
Your father tells to stop dressing like a ****
He doesn't consider
That no matter how you dress
Men will look at you like you're a buffet
Ready to eaten.
When you're sixteen
Someone defines your worth by the absence of your virginity
They don't consider
That you someone took your innocence long before you made the conscious choice
To let someone else see the crevices of your body and spirit.
When you're twenty
Your friend tells you that you were asking for it
Because you got carried away with a drink in hand
That alcohol didn't make them do what they did
This is sexism
Because no one ever asks him "what were you wearing?"

They tell you to eat from the hand that hits you
Because we're teaching our girls wrong
Because we're not teaching our boys at all
These girls become women who believe their worth
Hinges on their ****** experience
Hinges on their beauty
Hinges on some man
They're socially designed to fall in love with.
They're told that he's responsible for holding the door for them
But if he enters her body with her consent
That's her responsibility
When will we stop teaching women
That they should expect to be violated
That they should expect to be silenced
That they need to be protected
Because the same men who believe they can **** a woman
And get away with it
Are the same ones who want to keep them
Safe and sound.

It dies.
Flower crushed between sweaty fingers
My shaking palms reach out to you
I cannot escape
A waterfall pulls me into this scenescape
So I let it wash my fear away.
I feel her lips pressing down on mine
Her scent is rose water and tangerine
I kissed a woman
Or she kissed me?
I kissed a woman
Looking up, I feel the knots within my gut
My belly does not approve of some online romance
My belly does not approve of romance, period
That's why we keep it casual
And I have other men around
Like scarves to flaunt for different occasions
But the part they leave out
Maybe intentionally
Is that I only engage in relationships
Where I have complete control.
And so the flower between sweaty fingers wilts
It dies.
They all do
Because I grasp them too tightly.

Dear society,
I have a gut!
It's where I keep all the men I eat
From my SJW rampages
You tell me to slim down
To relax
To let go.

But I cannot let go
That my friend was date ***** at a party
By the same boy who abused his ex girlfriend so badly
She tried to **** herself
And yet, he walks free.
See, you tell him as long as he does this behind closed doors
It is acceptable

I will not stand down and watch this happen
I cannot let go
That four separate occasions in my life
A man did not listen to my pleads
"No" does not mean try harder
"No" does not mean convince me
"No" does not mean pretend you didn't hear me
"No" means back the *******!
Staying silent and catatonic means back the *******!
Crying and shaking still mean back the *******!

So now we pull the strings tighter
Lace up my poised facade
But I refuse to do it anymore
I refuse to submit to you, sweet society,
To the smoke and mirrors that allows men to build up their egos so much so
That when someone says they do not want to have *** with you
Suddenly, oh easily damaged masculinity, you are banished to an awful land called the "friend zone"
No one owes them anything
And we wonder why ****** violence is so prevalent on college campuses
In the workforce
In the military

I now **** the gun up
Pull the trigger
Shoot myself in between their stacks of bills
Their comfortable place in the world
And you, sweet society,
Will never liberate me
As you claim
The way I have freed myself.

We all have a different story.
White male, sophomore says
His father told him all **** should be shot on site
So these words continue to constrict his neck like a noose
Making it impossible for him to breathe
Giving him no room to live
Like the conversion camp he was sent to over and over again
It leaves cuts that have yet to turn into scars.

We all have a different story.
White female, junior tells
How the emails kept popping up on her screen
Like unwanted blemishes that she could scrape off
One by one.
Church members chastising her
Because their favorite boy
Had just been accused of thrusting the life out of her
She is covered in "are you sure you weren't asking for it?"
She's sure.
Blood on her hands that spells out the word ****
And she lathers her body
Drowns herself in it
Until an unassuming girl is able to be her life preserver
But they still have to pretend to be
"Just friends"

We all have a different story.
Me?
So used to hearing
"You can't love both."
So used to hearing
"You can't even love yourself."
Now I live in a world
Where man, woman, no gender can love me
Because I make myself too prickly to touch
Whenever someone comes too close
I turn into a cactus
Because how could anyone possibly love someone
Who has been taken advantage so many times
That she cannot find it in her heart
To make love to someone
She has *** with them
But there is no love
But there is no passion at all.

We all have a different story.
Being queer in an evangelical community
Is like being raw meat
In a dog house.
They can smell you from a mile away
Ready for the ****
Do not stab your knife into me
In the kindest way you can think of
By telling me
"I'll pray for you."
Do not pour your poison into my body
By saying
"God loves the sinner but hates the sin."
My existence is no accident
My queerness is not my choice
You wonder why so many
Lesbian gay bisexual transgender questioning youth
Abandon the church?
It is not because of God
It is because these congregations keep playing God
This is the same **** story.
Do you know how hard it is the find an accepting church community?
It is a suicide mission
As I walk into the congregation
Arms open, eyes closed
Waiting to be embraced
Or shot on site.