I'm Still Here

the darkness is everything we want but shouldn't
have, or shouldn't do
magical darkness
shape-shifts trees and bushes in the bluish-silver moonlight,
it's like you're on drugs
but you're not

darkness is my voice of silence
I have spent the past several years silencing myself
for no good reason
other than the fact that I live in a glass house
check that:
a glass coffin
because this isn't living
I'm not really sure what's holding me back
I'm not really sure if when I look back on times I didn't feel held back, I was too wild
too weird
alienating others

being a woman can hold you back, if you let it
we say things are better now, we say we live in a "post-feminist" era...
but I'm still afraid to ride the train at night for fear I'll get raped
and then get blamed for it because I was riding the train late at night
I'm still afraid I'll alienate people every time I open my mouth

there are more insidious things

like people asking my husband and I when we're going to have a baby and then become hostile when we say we don't want children

I'm sure that someone, somewhere, once told me it’s all in my head, that if I just take it like a man and pick myself up by my boot straps I won’t feel held back
that I’m so lazy I can’t even admit I’m lazy and that I'm holding myself back because I’m lazy and chicken-shit

even though I don't remember who said it, they're in my head, their faces running like masks of wet gray sand, telling me my feelings aren’t real

but they are
and I know I'm not lazy

I know because

I fight
I fight every day
and I'm still here
most of the fight, these days,
is still being here
and I am