writer: Alloe Mak

stepping out of the shower, i feel freshly baked. clouded by the fog of my bathroom, i think i look like a statue withered away by harsh winds. my steaming toes and dripping fingers serve as a reminder than i am but an amalgamation of every woman before me. 

i resent it.

to be woman is to be hurt. to be woman is to be in pain. to be woman is to be tortured and raped; it is our physical and metaphorical destinies. suffering is engrained within our blood—our chemistry is one filled with sorrow to be carried with our every step. it plagues us and grounds us—a violating constant in the day to day cacophony of war which drowns out the ever flowing present.

to be woman is to wail. to be woman is to cry. 

woman is sacrificial. woman is blood.

so men continue to create gods. they create villains, wars, and games with mortal threat in an attempt to feel some semblance of the pain we women feel; to illusion themselves with false sorrow; to disseminate themselves from their guilt and the knowledge that their existence is a threat. that they are born aggressors; and that they are blameworthy and responsible for being so.

and i hurt when i look in their eyes, and i feel jealousy at the way that they walk. that they breathe so freely— without the constant  and unending infringement on both body and soul. and that they will never understand, never truly know. and that i ache at the mere idea of being a man; that i was born with the malediction of existing as a woman.

and the storm rages on. and i cannot breathe. and i cannot cry because to cry is to be woman and i do not wish to be woman any longer. i do not wish to be tortured, or to be ill fated from the start. for woman is a shakespearean tragedy; woman is a melodrama to be put into play.

on the constant precipice of death, to live is an unforgivable crime. to breathe or to weep or to feel pain makes me feel even more despair—and i hate it. this is what woman is fetishized for. i cannot even exist in the sorrow imposed upon me, yet i cannot exist without it. 

god forbid i feel pain.

god forbid i resent it. 

god forbid. 

god forbid.