Sometimes I say things to piss people off

Just to see them shuffle

 

Their eyelids spread

 

Like the diameter of space roaches inhabit when you turn on the light

 

They become astounded when I refuse to cry

And find it easier to compare me to guy

rather than just admit that: I’m dope

 

Unbothered by opinions or expectations

The supposed fail of my generation

I am not afraid of the proclamation that

 

I am

my own salvation

And the judgmental sunshine that hits your face

after you’ve drowned yourself in whiskey

wondering how you let me get away with the shit I get away with

 

I am

the supposed token that turned you into a violin

I left you an artist

Showed you how colors can be felt

and now the magenta of your mother’s lips reminds you of me

And you have to love me to love her

So you love me

And you love me

And you hate it

But you love her

So you love me

 

I am

the woman your  father told you to avoid

Your epidermis crawls in my direction at the thought of my name

The politics of my pussy were never up for bargain

Your opinion was never part of my inventory

Your memory and I have decided on eternal matrimony

                                                            Because God is female

 

There is no compliment

In the defamation of the character

of a creature that menstruates as I do

 

There will be no blushing

In scraping from the floor

the details of the character

of she, whom once he claimed to have loved

 

There will be no flowers accepted

For the washing of the floors below my feet

With ill words about a vagina previously inhabited

 

There will be no smiles in telling me:

 I’m different

 

There will be no happiness neatly packaged

In brown paper bags

Same color as the shits that her and I both take

 

There will be no competition amongst ovaries

I am equal to the woman before me

I have removed the blindfold that prevented me from seeing the woman after me

 

And I

Respect her. 

Oelania Rubino is a mother, writer and an artist. She was born in Dominican Republic and moved to Brooklyn, New York in 1998.