Invisible
Location
By Chanda Bynum
I see this girl
And she is a girl with straightforward eyes and blank expressions.
The Maker has sculpted curvaceous hips and thighs into her gene pool
Complete with a butt and breasts
But he never thought of how this would play on her insecurities
Play
In the playgrounds of her mind
Swinging from monkey bars of uncertainty
Sliding down slides of self-consciousness
Tagging each other
Whispering in her ear “You’re it”
She is tagged
Marked by her butt and her breasts
Branded by her hips and her thighs
This is all they see
Single as can be
Because no guy would want “we”
Without these
Hips and thighs
And ass and tits
Excuse my vulgar language
But didn’t you hear?
I’m tagged
I’m it
Knocked with wolfish shouts and catcalls of the men that surround me
“Damn, look at that ass!”
“Fuck that! Look at them lips! I bet you she cold on her head game!”
DON’T
Try and silence me
I’m aware
This is all they see
The head that sits on my shoulder
Might as well be severed and discarded
All these illiterate fools can read
Is the slide in my legs
The switch in my hips
Motions that come with the territory
To these males
I am my body
Sometimes I wish I was flat
Pancaked
In the front and the back
Just to see if the eyes that cut over my body
Would bother to draw blood
Over an underdeveloped one
Would those stinging eyes
Bother to leave dirty bruises on my skin
Would they bother to spit some ole’ floozy shit to me?
Just to see if they could get with me
Steal my innocence
Then hang me by my panties
“I bet you can suck some good dick.”
Sitting at work
At the front desk
These are the words that I look up to.
“I’m sayin’ doe; your lips are big as fuck. You ever suck dick before?”
That is what he asked me
Those are the words that punched me in my gut
I washed my hurt under the faucet of a smile
Because that is what I had to do
I wanted to rip my lips off
I wanted to bury them so far in my stomach
They’d dissolve in the acids of my insides
I was ashamed
Defending myself doesn’t matter
Cuz’ either I cuss him out or go do what he thought I had to
I know he preferred the latter
He wanted me to climb down the ladder of respect
Get on my knees
And do what
These lips must be made for
I just want to cover up
I want to feel safe
And secure
In this body the Maker gave me
But I can’t help
Feeling like I’ve been cursed
With these round mounds
That feed lust
In the eyes of men
I can’t trust them
They won’t know me
Because the first thing I’ll communicate to them
Is my body
Blinded by the image in front of them,
They can’t see what’s under my skin
A beautiful mind
Bigger than my rear end
Wise-cracking lips
Goofiness plays hide and seek under my eyelids
I am more than the layers of skin covering my bones
More than long legs and thick thighs
I am a writer
Passionate words dive from my brain onto paper
I am a sister
Who is loved and cared for
Me
I am Me.
My billboard is more than colors and words
It cannot be scrapped or written over
It is me
Not these humps riding my back and my front
Those who care
Will pull out the road map
And discover the adventure to me
Then will I be visible