I'M ALIVE BITCH

I feel trapped in my skin because I am not supposed to be who I am.

I am loud and talkative and thoughtful and opinionated and alive

I am not quiet and submissive and subservient and owned and dead

I do not feel the hindrance in my daily life, I feel it on my daily being in my daily breaths

That seemed to be sucked out of my living corpse in a way that leaves me hollow

How can I be myself when the definition of my color, my culture, my sex, my everything is not who I am

How can live with these chains that threaten to break my wrists like

Candlesticks

Can I just live? Can I just not have to suffer through constant pressure to be

Myself?

Because yes I am colored and yes I am a woman and yes I am loud and yes I am human I am not your subservient being

I am a human who loves passionately and screams into open silence

I am a match in an eerily dark room, the black smudge of paint

On white canvas

I am alive and I am bright and I am me.