[untitled: on becoming myself]

~Jenuine

I parked behind a flashy car
out of which a woman stepped
I noticed her license plate
around which these words proclaimed:

I’M BAD…because the men like it

and I thought about
all the decades
and
all the centuries
throughout
all of history
during which womyn
have been taught
to bend
and
to twist
and
to contort
ourselves into some more
“palatable” version of womyn
only
in the end
we are not womyn
but women

and for those who resisted
and still do resist
there awaits her
certain chastisement
and
shaming
and
sentencing to solitary singleness
for life.
without the possibility of parole.

we’ve learned that
if we like men
and
if we hope to be liked
by men
we need to be
what the men like

so we
pushed things up
and we
cinched things in
and we
stuck things out

“because…the men like it”

and we
gave things up
and we
kept things in
and we
went with out

“because…the men like it”

but now here I am
having worked
into exhaustion
to become
what is not me
by striving toward
some standard
in which I
do not believe
all because…the men like it?

Now, I cannot lie
I do love a good man
but I gotta love myself more

because a man?
well, he may stay
or he may go
but
for better
or
for worse
’til death do us part
I’m bound to my self
authentically ever after

so here is how I plea
sentence as you will:
I’m me…because I like it