To the boy in the back of the class complaining when I start to talk,

This,

Is just another woman's poem.

When people ask me why my hands are shaking as I tell them my story

I'll tell them all about you.

How you watch me bleed out grief

Without catching,

Like a book you're forced to read in 8th grade English,

You're missing the point

Of just another woman's poem.

You already know what comes next!

The sob story,

The whining,

The melodrama in the voice of everyone woman who tells you

How the words were ripped right out of her throat.

So you take this time to snicker.

Take this time to draw on your desk

Or whisper with your friends,

While I tell them how every story only sounds the same

When you stop listening,

Like this

Is just another woman's poem.

Another "I was just a little girl poem."

Another "He said it would be quick and easy like brushing my teeth," Poem.

Another "night in my princess themed bed at my cousins house, with my fairy wand on my nightstand and a knife under my pillow because next time he came into my room uninvited, I was gonna make sure he would come out bleeding-"Poem.

And I think I get it.

I know how tiring it must be to hear another woman's poem, I'm tired

Of listening to other women's poems.

Of how we scream and beg to be heard,

And not even that is evidence enough that we did in fact struggle. s

That we really weren't asking for it.

I'm a solider,

Who's tired of the sound of gunshots.

I think inside all of us women are.

We are standing on a battle field on fire, \I-

And you think you have a right to complain about the ugliness of the Ashes.

The poems aren't the problem.

We have built towers taller than the men who held us down, Out of our broken bones and spite, Of course they aren't pretty.

Nothing holy ever is.

The work is never pretty,

But it's still the only way the house is built.

So as long as the boy In the back of the class Is still rolling his eyes,

still counting down the seconds till I stop talking, I still have work to do.

And maybe someday,

This won't be just

Another

Woman's

Poem.