I am my umbilical cord
My mother’s sleepless nights
My father’s long drives
I am the scent in my mother’s wardrobe
The high heels I never fit
I am the ingrained institutionalized religion
Founded on fear.
I am the shame and the guilt
The vagina
I am the black eyeliner I draw around my eyes
The chopped hair and grunge outfits
Of every 13 year old
I am my harasser’s hand
mouth, skin
I am the no stuck … still lingering in my throat
The no I screamed
It will forever echo
The no all the women screamed
I am them
I am their silenced no
I am my first fuck
His cologne and cigarettes
The same cologne I later found in my father’s bathroom
I am the literature I read
The writer’s writing that I imitate
The subject of their male gaze
I am their muse.
I am their blood on paper
I am the blood of a broken hymen
I am the blood splattered in Syria, Palestine and Iraq to name but a few
Splattered like the glass of red wine I once spilt
I am the stain
I am the silenced voices of my grandmothers
I am my mother’s divorce
I am my past lover who spoke in my tongue
I am my lover whose tongue can’t dance with mine
I am the traditions I broke
Will continue to break
The taboos I embrace and the sins that give me pleasure
I am my rebellion
My sexuality,
My seduction
I am the women
Silenced, beaten, raped,
Biting, scratching, fighting back
I am everyone.
I am no one.
I am my liberation.
I am the bray of my beating heart:
I am, I am, I am