I AM TOLD THAT I AM ANGRY

I am told that I am angry,

that my anger has been cultured

out of mind.

I am told that I have not sought

the mountain top

because the path was sabotaged-

mother, father, brother, sister

all contributing traps, fences,

exploding mines to bar the way.

But I never was a serious climber.

It is too hard, even without

gendercidal barriers.

I do not like to fight,

though I have and I do.

I must sometimes fight

to be allowed not to scale

some looming mountain peak.

Yet it is true.

I feel my gender’s anger

for the oppressive fear

that denied my freedom of dress,

the freedom of traveling alone,

of living alone.

Why am I,

like the many of a hated race,

made to feel an ever-present fear,

Ambush always seeming imminent,

No place of safety,

and no freedom to forget

the nearness of the threat?

Why has this constant terror

been supported as tradition,

a culturally accepted norm?

For this crippling of my life

there is anger–

a raging inferno that would, if loosed,

be matched only

by the devastation

at the birth of a volcano.

#Feminism #ViolenceAgainstWomen