I remember.

I remember 

slipping through roads, 

foreign and the ones to home

being chased, a figure slithering 

tongue wet. I remember my mother 

telling me what a good touch is

what a bad touch is. The ruins have
stories to tell..

I remember a friend crutching her heart 

as she began retrieving a

childhood taken away by a lecherous 

grandfather after school memories in the heat 

of not a moment.

I remember sitting on your stairs lined with roses 

overlooking all the city lights. You said a man issued a fatwa 

against women

to not have hair dipped in colours of sunsets, 

for hair to not have a life of their own choice

to a life of uni-brows, 

and it doesn't matter

which towering stair I pick

or if I sit on a terrace looming above skyscrapers  

I never tip this power play.

Always being tipped over on this weigh.

I have amassed a set of words from men over the years

and when I begin to unfold them on summer nights

They are lonely insults, they are compliments dipped in fat shaming

they are letters of harassment coated in gold, they are diaries of changes observed 

in my body, before I have begun to say 'NO'. Inboxes bursting at seams with satin lined swords 

sharpened over and over with privilege.  

Every woman I have met has to had to slip, sink into her skin, pools of self 

 to begin chipping the slivers of the tree of abuse they had left in their wake.

There are politicians overtaking the stage, 

banning alcohol to disguise a nation raping its own mothers, 

and every poem I write for my kin

I have to apologise to men, syringe it onto paper I'm still on your side 

but not of the system.

Even though I have dipped my head into sinks countless times

for water to break into rooms on campuses bound with time 

I remember the fear, that hangs onto women circling through 

streets, drenching themselves in perfume to erase the stench of it.

And I don’t want to,

I don’t want to remember all this,

To have to apologise for my voice,

to put up a smile even when I’m emerging out of drains

to contort into a charade of having to live up to a woman 

that doesn't exist.