We will never be enough,
being a woman will never be enough.
Creator, life giver, carrier,
and still, we will never be enough.
Alabama, you’re so wrapped up in your pro-life sentiments,
Northern Ireland is cheering you on at the sidelines,
with Trump and your other right wing, right hand allies.
Pro-life but who’s life?
Who’s life do you value or rather,
which lives do you not?
You welcome guns, police violence, brutality and scream pro-life.
Pro-life but stripping women of our choice in life,
our autonomy.
Let us consent to our own pregnancies,
and, don’t act, as Rupi Kaur says “as if the womb and breast never fed you“.
Neglecting and rejecting women, to focus on what you think is the end of a life,
which I correct you is just a cluster of cells,
and I remind you, these cells can’t feel like the mother –
they can’t feel pain, they can’t feel shame.
They can’t feel
one
single
thing.
I believed the world wasn’t corrupt,
I tried to anyway.
Believed the world wasn’t corrupt,
just misinformed by the likes of presidents and politicians.
Unaware of the stories of female tragedy and deep-rooted trauma,
the narratives of severe distress.
But now I see,
not unexposed, just ignorant,
because hear this:
Alabama, if a 12 year old girl is raped,
if any womangirlchild is raped
and ends up pregnant within your suffocating borders,
that same womangirlchild is forced to carry the baby,
to the full term,
for the full 9 months.
Have the product of trauma and abuse,
slowly growing like a worm inside her,
invading her,
reminding her,
defining her.
And Alabama,
you say miscarriage must be investigated,
marked as an elective abortion,
as if this trauma were not enough,
as if this pain were not too tough,
as if our women’s cries were not loud enough.
I am present,
I’m here fighting with my words and my stories,
for safety, justice, inclusion
but who’s fighting for us?
And Alabama I am sad,
but not shocked to learn,
that I care a lot more about this world and it’s people,
than the world’s people will ever care about me.