It’s taken me a thousand and one cries 

To realize 

I put a blanket over my head to shut out the world. 

A world that sees women as sex objects 

But heaven forbid you give them the right to decide what to do with their bodies. 

If they want to keep or not keep the product of their trauma, a rape. 

No, says the world. 

No, you must live through that trauma. Every god damn day. 

As you raise that child in the middle of a pandemic and a formula shortage. 

And no, we won’t adopt your baby.

The foster care system is full and broken enough. 

23 years ago, that could have been me. 

Only three and still remember it. 

I still live through it. 

Almost 10 years into my relationship, I still live through that trauma.  

Sometimes I don’t want intimacy because I’m scared of being hurt like that again. 

Sometimes I don’t feel like I deserve love. 

I’m not worthy of it. 

So I cry under my blanket because the world is too fucked up to face. 

I don’t want it to have the satisfaction of seeing me cry and break. 

But it is So. Fucking. Hard. 

Not to break when the world slowly strips away everything it took so long to build up. 

I’m trying not to let it pull me in, but I’ve never felt so worthless, disrespected, and inferior. 

I cry for the women who already knew what that feels like. 

I cry for the women who have trauma with now limited access to healthcare. 

I cry for all of us women who can’t make our own decisions about our bodies. 

I cry for all the malnourished babies that cannot get formula. 

I cry for the little girls in my class and cry for their future. Who knows if they’ll even get a say in sixteen years?

I cry for myself because I am not strong enough to fight this fight. 

I cry for RBG. 

She wouldn’t have let this happen to us. 

Justice, we need you to come back to us and fix this awful world, 

To bring justice back home.