Nightmare

I have been running for my life across the passageways

that are as twisted as tipsy funnel-cakes

trying to make their way through

a roller coaster ride

Passing through puddles of blood and a multiverse of

clawed fragments of flesh lying around, I finally reach a door -

I knock; I knock to find myself entering into a galley of mirrors

where my vagina and my breasts

seem to be the only ones visible

I can’t find my palm that first felt the dew drops

on the grass or the tip of my toe that brushed against

the wood in my first ballet lesson

I cannot make sense of disjointed reflection

with my fingers that once supported the pen which made me

a writer and neither can I see

my spine that has been holding me up straight all my life

My genitals shining in neon lights while a silhouette

creepily tells me how it is okay for me to lose my

new job, a hike in pay-roll, midnight strolls,

the right to my own body and making my

decisions and the right to do so while not being

judged amongst a million other things

I sob looking at the never-ending list of the whispers

by the silhouette and wonder if this nightmare was

not just a dream but a real-life moment where I had to

bear the brunt of being uneasy in my own skin, place,

amidst my people and the world because nothing

mattered or was more evident or noticeable

than my genitals and gender

Oh wait, maybe I messed up a day in a woman’s life

And accidentally assumed it

to be a nightmare.

'Cause that’s just routine now, isn’t it?

Skin

She touched her skin

and it wasn’t like those

ads in the tv

or the models prepping

for the runway

No, it wasn’t made of

supple ambitions and plump but I gotta's,

rather it was made of

hushed sighs, puffy I am exhausted's

and moments of I survived this'

But most of all,

it was made of comfort -

the one which made her feel home

regardless of how messy,

dysfunctional, problematic

or clumsy it got inside,

she knew this was one place she

could be

one place that was hers

and hers alone!