My Identity is Not in your Mouth

Your definition is not for

my liberation

for every time I've been defined

it was to leave pieces

of myself behind

and make boundaries where

I could not be.

No one has any right

to go around

defining me.

Define the shape of my lotus feet

and narrow me with whalebone.

Tell me I need to be escorted

with some kind of chaperone.

Deny me banking--

deny me cars.

Give me a separate entrance

into bars.

Deny me jobs, bastardize my kids--

these are the results of the

"defining" you did.

Choked with a halo,

burdened by wings--

women have been circumscribed

by the definition of our things.

The size of our breasts,

the cut of our lips,

the swell of our asses

and the width of our hips--we've been

callipered to excess for

our callipygyny by scientific tongs

and measured like

an anatomy of wrongs.

Our literal clitori a mystery, our G-spot a

Shangri-la, our existence supposed to be

babies,

who knows whatever else for?

Don't ask the definition of

what you would rather not even face--

Human.

Just fucking human.

And don't get me started on race.