By I will tell you what it means
To be a woman
The world is a scale
And you will always be
Too heavy
You will never measure up
To their expectations
There is not enough kale on earth
To cleanse what they have made you
Become
Listen
Those stretch marks
Running zig zags
Across your stomach,
And in the hollows of your elbows?
Those are warrior badges:
You deserve them
And the dips in your lower back
That show every time
You sit too long?
Those are firm reminders
That your skin tells a story
Your body is like a river in the spring:
Full and swollen
And ready to burst
That’s how much life you’ve got in you
Listen
Quit scrubbing at you knees
To make them lighter
When you were little you crawled on those knees way too long
And made way too many discoveries,
Just to erase them now
And the crevices underneath your eyes?
Well, those are just accents, honey
Parentheses framing a beautiful soul
Don’t you ever let them tell you otherwise
If you are a Muslim, you a first and foremost a slave of Muslim men.
You are not a woman, at least not in the sense that the majority of women perceive themselves to be.