Don't You Dare: A Poem for the Modern Feminist

Don’t you dare try that slut-shaming bullshit on me

with your hand on my breast

and another up in my tree

Don’t you tell me who or what I’m to be

I spent to many years walking around that track for free

yet you’re here now, talking about my sexuality

as if I couldn’t dare or possibly be

someone for whom the girls call on

a mentor

a lover

a sexy motherfucker

as if fucking mothers were bad-

please, they deserve all the pleasure in the world - 

and all the autonomy too

make that decision, boo

it’s all you

Yeah, sometimes I wear fucking heels in public, 

with my skirt hiked up so high you could rub it, 

without my permission, if you wanted to 

but if you do just be warned that it’s your fault, not mine

for the simple reason that 

my thigh highs do not define

all that exists within my mind

a beautiful paradigm with not enough time

to be realized or celebrated for what she truly is inside

… yet I don’t wear that for you, or you, or the person

to whom all this is untrue,

the patriarchal dove, sending a peace branch 

with little to no love

for a sister with the right to choose

who she screws, and in what kind of shoes

you who have tried to pressure me

into watching porn, or dancing with three

different men and women in just one evening, 

propose to tell me that I’m perpetuating?  

A roman orgy, is that what you want, really?

Because I’ve spent my whole life

recovering from lonely.

I want the freedom to be.

Finally.

I’m angry now and so I’ll resign

all my time

the years I’ve spent down in the grime

for this justice now, 

for the chance to say whats really on my mind, 

stop hating on a sister when you’re running out of time

for all the other things in the world-

boys and girls

growing up amid the constant swirl of gossip -

what is she doing on that cover in that getup?

How can she speak for any woman, let alone all?

and she can’t, that’s not that point.

That’s not the point, at all…

By me, Charlotte Stephens