How would our sisters think of us now?

Looking back on our feeble skin and hallowed brows

After years of picket signs and flowering painful remarks

Shards of our husbands “feelings” embedded in our hearts

Our strength over years of agony whisked away by pencil skirts and mascara rain

Men lifting our burdens because they’re so strong and we’re somehow too weak

to remain to carry on

 

How would our grandmothers think of us now

Fighting with shrieking voices, gnashing teeth, and crushed hopes

Swinging the broken bones of our humanity

Broken down by men’s mentality

We cry

But don’t you know who you are?

You are the bearer of life

A machine made by God himself of oil, gold, and silver

Pumping stronger with every heartbreak we live on

Life springs from our bowels and clinches onto our stomachs and backs

Mortal combat is played with our insides and yet we live on

Our tears grow up into light and break down the walls of doubt against us

And we still live on

 

How will our mothers think of us now?

We’ve replaced our strength with silence and concealer

Leggings squeezing our thighs, beauty dripping from our eyes

And yet we call ourselves ugly

However we lift the weight of our ancestors

Aren’t you tired, tired of being on a 24-hour floor show?

Performing tricks, flips, and cracking jokes just to satisfy the crowd

Stop painting your face, you’re not construction

Stop building up lies for your own destruction

You're more than a woman crush Monday or Wednesday

Let your voices ring for your sisters your grandmas your GREAT grandmas

Come as you are

Beauty is not an option but your virtue