Dear woman.

Dear woman, 

Do you get tired?

Do you get tired of being peddled as a body,

Just a body?

*

A lump of bone and mass,

A face with cake of snow.

Your mouth zipped shut,

A lock on all that you know.

Smile, smile, smile and blush at the ground,

“Hey, you are an object of our desire. Be feminine. We’ll do the talking, bro”.

*

Your eyes lined,

Your hair made straight;

Your lips plumped up,

Your skin – porcelain ware.

Your body corseted to angles, fit to be savoured by men and men alike.

Never a person in their eyes –

Just a butt,

Just a cleavage,

Just a pile of flesh giving them their high.

*

You strut the 7 inches walk,

with 5 layers of white, 3 tubes of red lip queen and 17 tries of winged eye.

You’re measured from side to side,

“38-36-forty? 3/10, send in the next chick, yo!”

Numbers, numbers, numbers – all that you are.

Reduced, rated and picked apart.

*

You are at war with yourself,

and with others too.

That girl he looked at when he was with you,

“That slutty bitch she tricked my perfect man’s eyes with her large boobs.”

Ha.

You try and try to be more,

while he continues to be less for you.

And in this struggle to be more, you become less too.

*

I wouldn’t mind,

but you have condemned yourself,

and others too –

to believed that it’s the only way a woman deserves love,

That she can’t be fire – just someone’s flame, lusty wants

that she can’t weave poetries, have a faraway glance,

but be moulded to the fancies of a man.

That she isn’t more than relationships,

that she needs to be tied down to someone to feel validated,

that she is beautiful only when a man tells her so

That she needs to have YOU as her parameter of comparison,

a photoshopped reality

and that dear woman, is the tragedy of you.

*

P.G.