#fgm – @anenlighteningellipsis on Tumblr

this poem is for my mother, whose bodily autonomy was violated whose womb was torn from her already repeatedly ravaged frame without her consent who was ‘tightened up here and there’, for her husband [whose own misogyny and culpable atrocities do not enter into this poem, but for which he will atone] all of this and multitudes more… at the hands of man this poem is for my grandmother, whose unswerving faith in western medicine, whose 16 year old naiveté, sweet-taught 'benefit of the doubt' innocence and societal sickness no inoculation could prevent left her body open, ripe for the taking on the examination table -- my aunt in 9 months time... at the hands of man this poem is for my great-grandmother, whose vagina was sewn completely SHUT at the age of thirty-two, because she ‘kept getting pregnant’ and 'there was no other way'… at the hands of man this poem is for all women mutilated, stripped of agency and flayed as meat. this poem is for the one-in-three. this poem is for all women. this poem is for the silent sufferers and the raging ranters. this poem is for those women to whom each act of violence is simply another stone atop the heaping rubble already crushing their bones. this poem is for the oppressed the abused the misused the silenced the gas-lighted and invalidated the raped and mutilated the violated and the victim-blamed the slut-shamed the maimed the debased and degraded the brainwashed and the indoctrinated the ‘get-back-up-and-fight-again’ the ‘i-don’t-know-how-to-fight’ the 'i-shouldn’t-have-to-fight’ the 'i-can-only-keep-breathing-tremulously’ the 'you-will-not-defeat-me’ the 'i-cannot-live-with-this-anymore-so-i-am-doing-what-seems-best-to-me’… this poem is for all women whose voices men are most afraid of. this poem is an agonizing primordial shriek in the dead of night. this poem is your ballast, your reminder during tempests; you are innately worthy of respect. you are innately worthy. period. this poem is a hemorrhage-blood-stained handkerchief. this poem is a weapon. this poem is an epitaph. this poem is a sharpened scalpel with his name on it. this poem is TO those men, at whose hands my mothers, my sisters, my women, our women, ourselves, our selves, are taken and desecrated – i will find you. i will cut them off.

anenlighteningellipses, “His Hands”