This is what it feels like
(I don’t know)
to be kept out, sent to the back,
inked with numbers like cattle
(I bought my ink with dollar bills
you sold your soul to make)
This is what it feels like, one tenth of a percent
to send my child out, brown eyes
thick lips, pants sagged and face
inked like you don’t know
he never pulled the trigger
White as I am
you can’t tell,
arms scabbed and ribs shining
like blades in the street light
You can’t tell
I held that belly, sunken now
in the palm of my hand when he came home
small as life
You can’t tell
I wear my whiteness like armor
(you don’t know)
protect me when I walk at night, keep me in the car
when I get pulled
my brake lights shot like Walter Scott’s but I’m alright
It’s just a warning
Careful now,
don’t get hurt.
I know this
My breasts
(no matter how small)
my ass is a beacon, shining out
spotlights on the fact that I am there
to be taken
that you can have the thing that I have never
until right now
given up one hundred percent voluntarily because I know
from the time I was 14 years old
that if you want it
you’re going to take it
anyway
This is how it feels
(I don’t know)
to be safe in the world
This is how it feels
(I don’t know)
to be safe
This is how it feels
(I know this, now)
to be helpless, to lie flat still frozen
in the dark to wait
for the things that gobbled up the blacks the Jews the
mouthy women the men crawling on the street with needles in their veins
the infants pulled to term and shit out on the sidewalk
screaming with addiction while the pro-life movement dangles formula and warmth
above their heads, the cost of daring to be born
to be sacrificed to hungry priests to be grown up
cut and bleeding
on the bathroom floor
This is what it feels like
(I don’t know)
to be quiet, watching, waiting
until they come for us.