For Women

I wish you knew how much it hurts me when you refuse to see past my pretty face, how it pierces my chest when you decide I am incapable of more.
I wish I knew when being pretty became a lifetime achievement.
I wish you knew I had more to offer
From my pretty lips that are full and dripping with perfectly shaped seduction but can also speak volumes of life and wisdom – the pretty lips you only want to kiss.
I wish you knew I could offer more than my body that has been refined through the tortuous fires of life you wouldn’t care to know about because all you want to do is touch me, feel me up to determine if your children will land comfortably on my voluptuous breasts.
How I wish you knew that I have courage and the will of mighty warriors, strength – nothing you can compare to my soft, supple skin that feels like smooth butter when you touch it.
How I wish you’d take a minute to enquire about the dangerous, painful, shape-shifting paths my beautifully full and well-proportioned legs have treaded.
How I wish you knew that my power lies not only in disarming men with the way my hips sway this way and that or how I bat my eyelids. I wish you knew that my power is immeasurable, incomprehensible and although one of my greatest purposes is to bring life forth from my womb, I can do far greater, far more! I wish you’d stop for a moment and absorb all the beauty that is inside…
Before even I begin to forget about it and live only for my surface – my surface that still isn’t good enough because I make it up with this powder and that lipstick after undergoing this procedure and going under that knife – my surface that will eventually fade and leave me with nothing but something that could’ve been so much more.
I wish you knew!
Oh, but rest assured! I will compel you to swallow your prejudice like a bitter pill of truth, because in as much as your voluntary ignorance hurts me, I AM A WOMAN, and you forget that it was the woman that forced God, himself, to change his rules.
WOMEN BREAK THROUGH!

Trapped

I nervously make my way up the pearly-white staircase, naïve and not knowing what awaits me on the other side of the mysterious portal at the end of it.

I place my right hand on the golden knob and take a long, deep breath before I gather the courage to turn it, clockwise, and open the portal. I enter, left foot first, and it immediately feels as though I have walked into another dimension – a sinister one.

This room is so poorly lit.

“Lock the door,” his domineering voice instructs me.

I do as I am told without hesitation.

“Come here,” he says in a slightly friendlier tone.

I follow his voice and it leads me to a ponderous figure centred on a big, white bed with a dim lamp that gives the place a weak, reddish hue. It’s him. It’s daddy.

“How are you Lelo?”

“I’m fine daddy,” I embrace him. “How are you?”

“I’m okay. God’s grace is sustaining me.”

“I’m glad to hear that daddy.”

I gawkily sit on the carpeted floor beside the bed and look up at him with a childlike smile.

“Don’t sit on the floor, sit here,” he says as he pats a spot right next to him on the edge of the bed.

I find this a little odd, but I do it anyway. I mean, he is a man of God and my father in Christ, so he wouldn’t do anything to harm me, right? Right. I reassure myself, reprimand the chatterbox that is my subconscious and bring myself back to the present.

He notices that I am uneasy.

“Relax, Lelo.”

These words help me feel a little less uncomfortable and I sigh in relief.

“So, how can I help you?”

“Well err, I don’t know daddy. You summoned me so I thought you wanted to see me about something important – my musical career, perhaps?”

He smiles wryly at me.

“That’s correct, but I don’t want to dwell on that subject for now.”

That subject? Really? My music is that banal to him?

Slightly shocked at that puzzling statement, I ask him why he has summoned me.

“I want to ask you how you feel about me,” he answers.

My stomach sinks and my throat suddenly feels so desiccated that I cannot utter a word. How I feel about him? I’m completely befuddled. I don’t understand what he means.

“How I feel about you?”

I clear my throat.

“Well… what I feel for you is what every daughter feels for her father, daddy.” I shrug in hopes that he will not continue speaking so strangely.

“I understand that, but I want to know if you can see and feel beyond that, Lelo.”

Beyond that?

He notices my bemusement and giggles.

“Daddy, I don’t understand what you mean. You’re scaring me,” I manage to say in a trembling, breathy voice.

He puts his hand on my shoulder and laughs.

I am not laughing.

“It’s okay Lelo. I don’t want to confuse you. You may leave now.”

As frightened as I’ve ever been, I slowly rise from the edge of the bed and he quickly stands up and out of the covers.

Now paralyzed with the fear of what might happen, I stand still.

Still…

He stands in front of me and gives me a hug, but this one is different from all the others. This time he’s pulling on my bra-strap the same way little boys do with their sling-shots, ready to tackle whatever it is that they’re aiming at. This time he isn’t letting go.

I cannot move. Oh God, no! This can’t be happening to me! Not me. Please.

He pushes me onto the bed, gets on top of me and fondles me.

I close my eyes and surreptitiously wipe away the tears that force their way out. I concentrate on my loud and violent heartbeat.

He lies back and tells me to put my hands on him.

“Play with it! Come on!”

Disregarding my horror, I move my hands the same way the women move theirs in those pornographic videos I’ve seen online.

Before I can come to grips with my surreal reality, the surge of evil between his legs shoves its way in between mine. I’ve never felt such immense pain before. I’m fourteen years old and I do not have the mental capacity to understand what is happening to me. How can this be happening to me? To me! Every layer of my being is altered and it is at this point in time that daddy falls asleep with his face on mine.

His facial hair pierces my forehead and eyelid. My heartbeat is still so loud that I focus on it once again. I think about the sound and listen to nothing else – not even his snoring.

Autopilot.

Finally, after what feels like a lifetime, daddy’s hefty self gets off of me and I am covered in his sweat.

He slowly regains consciousness and closes whatever has just transpired off with a short prayer asking God to forgive us.

Us? Wow.

“Amen.”

I am instructed to clean myself up, get dressed and make it look as though nothing has transpired.

My body is numb. I’m bereft. I feel as though I am trapped, and I am.

I am trapped and mute for the next two-and-a-half years and some day, I’ll have to find my voice again.201806191615806065.jpg

I want

IMG_20180504_230806…to love

I want the between of us to disappear,
Our bodies and souls to cohere,
To do the opposite of what we’re told by fear,
I want the whole of you to draw near.

I want our palms and fingers to refuse separation,
Our lips to give in to our hearts’ persuasion, our hands to embark on a friendly invasion,
Like two lovers on a honeymoon, rise to the occasion.

I want us conjoined at the heart like Siamese,
Your greatest desires I’d love to appease,
To feel your whispers on my ear like a warm breeze,
I want passion and love that’ll bring us to our knees.

I want to be submerged, head first, into your ocean,
And get to know your core in no rush – slow motion,
To give ourselves to each other in solicitous devotion,
To make love and have the sound match the emotion.

I’m falling in love with you and I don’t want to be caught,
Even though you cause my most sordid thoughts.
I won’t let go of you, no matter what battle must be fought.
For you are the love, for lifetimes, my heart has sought.

I want the whole of you, all of you, to draw near,
To do the opposite of what we’re told by fear,
I want our bodies and souls to cohere,
I want the between of us to disappear.