Enough of a Woman | Poem by Lexi S. Brunson [Editor-in-Chief]

Enough of a Woman

I have been balancing without footing since the day I was created.

Chiseled from both flesh & dreams.

Perched on ideas that do not suit my fancy but instead interrogated my ability.

A cry for help

An internal struggle for redemption

in a place

no reparations shall be given.

[the strong woman's complex]

I will not snark at my uprising

of an upbringing.

For I was forged from something fierce.

Feminism at its own demise and womanizing at its most vulnerable. 

They thought I'd be the best of my bread.

I was loved from tip to toe.

I knew lust before it kissed me.

Pleasure

before it slid into my deepest depths. 

Heartbreak before it had a name. 

It was enough.

In the midst of it all I had been chosen to carry the burden to bare life.

So I would find grief in my induction into the club of red-rush between my legs.

A monthly celebration of my ripeness, that would follow with grief of misogyny.

I was upset that my gender was political. 

A statement of sexualization that I could not fight without wounds.

I could no longer be ANYTHING

I wanted to be.

[they call me woman]

I had hips, thighs, breast and an aura trained in swift battles of gender equity, pimpin, stubbornness, manipulation, and survival.

I was a dormant weapon in a fight I didn't know existed.

She was enough.

In time I was deemed ruthless. 

A temptress untouchable. 

A prize to be won, a purity to be kept.

The thought of wearing white to my matrimonial casket was torture.

I had to be dominant or be stepped on.

I navigated space with only the memory as guidance.

I had to hold my head high as if losing my paternal link had not broken me.

I had to hold my shoulders square like not having my brother's bond did not mar me.

[this is vulnerability]

I tried to find my way into the den of a wolf pack, because the testosterone smelled like comfort.

Here I would find a truth that was never meant for my eyes.

I was privy to information

that changed me

I was now loaded with arsenal that could never leave me blind

I could not unsee our curse

That behind closed doors their allegiance was never loyal

For every keeper

there were 3 throw away(s). 

For every forever

there were several for now(s).

I didn’t want to be loyal to a lie.

I didn't want to feel the pain of giving up tomorrow.

But I never betrayed the barriers

of their truth.

Until it I was sliced

by a double edged sword.

I had never been enough.

I had been cast aside

for and by my gender.

To perfect was my dismissal.

Intimidation was the poison.

I became unsuspecting wing man 

of fairy tales we publicly call goals

& privately envy.

[thus ignorance is bliss]

Ruined by options, I became an option.

A piece of a picture that had no frame.

A disregard of reality 

A word left unsaid

A speech tongueless

A happy home covered in happy homes, by way of a duck off's and funk off's.

Not a woman's woman. 

So my sisterhood would be stricken off the record.

Not a guy's girl.

So there is no ledger of platonic woe’s. 

Somewhere suspended between big cahonas & an intimidating cunt.

I suffered.

But that was not enough.

I would never bare title

So I made my own.

I would never hold rank. 

So they curse me as a martyr.

I spit back a five star general.

I bleed. Bucked. But would never fold.

It became the ego balance,

nature versus nurture.

A fight for the glory.

But my war had been started

in the womb of some other women,

in the sacrifice of some girls dreams,

in the blitz of some man's play.

Still I stand idol

Abusing my lineage

Willing to sign a peace treaty for the next woman's altar.

So she may never have to 

spill her own blood.

And yet still there leaves the question…

Is there ever enough of a WOMAN?

Lexi for /CW