Bloody Trail

I try to stand but my legs ache. I've held myself up for so long that my bones shake -

And I can't sit and rest, not even for a second. That would be a mistake -

Because if I sit, I make myself comfortable on the backs of women who fought to stand in the first place. The women who came before me cleanse me with their words, they hold me with their understanding and their pain only grows when they see their own wounds in my walk.

I freeze in the headlights of every car that passes. Not because I'm scared of death but because I wish for it. In those headlights, I see the eyes of every man who has ever devoured me.

Every man whose rotten mouth has ever said my name and tainted it. Every man whose hands have ripped out my vocal cords seconds before I could even use them. Every man who has locked me out of my body like I am nothing more than a visitor. I am a guest in my own bloodstream.

So I will not sit, or rest. The headlights that follow me are not the only ones that exist.

I will scream and yell, and stand tall with the support of the women who let me use their shoulders for safety. Women who untangled me from the suffocation of m-anacondas.

Women who don't consider my legs as feeble but women who see the stutter in my feet and say that I shouldn't have had to walk on glass at all.

So I will not sit, or rest.

I will make space on my own shoulders for women like me -

Women who are not weak or frail.

Women who will walk through life and leave their footprints in a bloody trail.