there is power in being a girl
but there's also sadness
                            struggle
                    ­        anger
                            uncertainty
and most of the time it's hard to find strength in being a girl
except in knowing that the sisterhood is rising,
we're coming,
a force to be reckoned with
and nothing to stop us

there is power in being a girl
and there is also inevitability

We danced, the cognate vessels
Nested in walls &
Cowered in blood

We buried love deep into
Beating flesh &
Writhed In Utero

We emptied veins of reason
Laid in torment &
Seceded in white gowns

We--Empiric experiments
We--Deficient devices
We--Thrashing threadbare

We--Womb
We--Woman

--
c

Ask me what kind of **** I am into
And I will take you on a magical journey
To fanfiction dot com backslash Harry Potter backslash NC17

What turns me on is Ginny Weasely in the restricted section
With her skirt hiked up;
Sirius Black in a secret passage way,
Solemnly swearing that he is up to no good;
And Draco Malfoy in the room of requirement slithering in to my Chamber of Secrets;
I am an unapologetic consumer of all things Potterotica,

And the sexiest part
Is not the way Cho Chang rides that broomstick
Or the sounds of Myrtle moaning,
The sexiest part is knowing
That they are part of a bigger story;

That they exist beyond eight minutes in ***** ***** *******,
That their kegels are not the strongest thing about them,
And still I am told
That my **** is ‘unrealistic’.

Not quite as ****** as flashing ads saying 'just turned 18’
So you can fantasize about ******* the youngest girl you won’t go to jail for.
I’m told that my **** isn’t quite as lifelike
As a room full of lesbians begging for ****,
Told that this is what is supposed to turn me on.

Don’t you give me raw meat
And tell me it is nourishment,
I know a slaughterhouse when I see one.

It looks like 24/7 live streaming
Reminding me that men are going to **** me whether I like it or not,
That there is one use for my mouth and it is not speaking,
That a man is at his most powerful when he’s got a woman by the hair.

The first time a man I loved held me by the wrists
And called me a *****
I did not think 'run’,
I thought 'this is just like the movies’

I know a slaughterhouse when I see one.
It looks like websites and seminars teaching you how to **** more *******,
Looks like fifteen-year-old boys bullied for being virgins,
It looks like the man who did not flinch
When I said stop and he heard 'try harder’.

If you play-act at butchery long enough
You grow used to the sounds of screaming,
It is just a side effect of industry;
Everything gets cut into small, marketable pieces.
I will not practice ****** hands
I will not make believe dissected women,

My *** cannot be packaged
My *** is magic
It is part of a bigger story
I am whole
I exist when you are not ******* me
And I will not be cut into pieces any more.

bikini eyelids flap to reveal big, beautiful lies,
soft mounds of sand washed by the rising tide.

the men touch and run their fingers through the warm gap;
like a river, their fingers flow along the charted map.

the places they'll go you won't believe until you see or smell,
all rivers reach the same sea eventually; they watch her ocean swell.
she sells seashells, but honestly her *** sells more well
because she's a tall glass of water when they're in burning hell.

she comes to their aid, but she requires to be paid...
oh well, they'll do anything just to get laid!

she stands with her feet wet on the seashore,
but wet sailors in the sea pass by and call her a ***** *****.

everything she did for them, they forget when they leave,
but who's got a ***** mouth with a cigarette under their sleeve?

My mum tells me to be careful as I close the front door
Every footstep the tick of a bomb about to go off
And I know that she will worry until she hears me return
That maybe this time I wasn’t careful enough
But I know Careful
Careful is a woman who walks in our skin when the door shuts behind us
Faceless and watchful
With keys jammed between each finger
And her honey voice is flowing through a perpetual conversation with the home screen of her phone
Her gait wide and her hood up,
hair down but tucked away
She never looks up
only shifts her eyes from left to right on a pendulum trajectory determined to read the cadence of the shadows
Like they are palms or tea leaves or a CCTV in operation sign on the front of a shop window
On the walk home
She is always moving
A waterfall rushing down the steepest drop to get back home with all her foundations in tact
Careful is always waiting for the other shoe to fall
She is texting texting texting details of her plans
Where she has been
where she is going
what is the license of the taxi she is in
Are the doors locked as soon as she shuts them?
How salty is too salty for a margarita or a tequila or a glass of water
Can anyone vouch for the milliseconds that her drink was out of her sight?
She has a  pair of earphones attached to nothing jutting from her ears
and her key clawed hands wrapped tightly around a can of pepper spray
And her car is parked right outside the building
Careful is always a woman living in a war zone
where the enemies can be the ones that she has trusted most
Or strangers that cast long shadows
She is a landmine that is always in danger of being stepped on
She is made into a three star salad that the jury reject because she was underdressed
Overexposed like the photos that Careful should never have sent
Because even she knows that she cannot exist
A woman is always careful
But never careful enough.