I Am the Future
A poem
I stand in the shadow of their iron tongues,
their sentences like chains wrapped
around my ankles, my wrists,
each syllable a shackle,
each word a wound that bleeds
the color of rusted steel.
They say woman, they say daughter,
they say girl, and it echoes
like a curse, like a song I never asked to sing.
But I am not their refrain,
not the soft hush of compliance
they crave, not the demure nod
of acceptance they mistake
for agreement.
I am the jagged edge
of refusal, the sharp inhale
before the scream, the splintered
fist against the wall of their tradition.
I will not be the quiet artifact
of their history, the fragile
glass they polish with pride
and display behind locked doors.
I burn with a fire they cannot name,
a heat that swells in my chest,
in my throat, in the hollow
of my belly where they tried
to plant their seeds of obedience.
But I am not soil for their growth,
not the fertile ground for their
weeds of patriarchy. I am the storm
that uproots, the flood that drowns
their whispers, the relentless wind
that carries their ashes to the sea.
Their gaze is heavy on my skin,
a weight I peel away like scales,
like a serpent shedding
the memories of hands that grasped
too hard, of voices that pressed
too close, of eyes that saw
too little of what I am
and too much of what they wished
to mold me into.
But I am not their clay,
not their soft malleable dream.
I am the stone that grinds
their words to dust,
the mirror that reflects
their failures back in their faces. L
I am the echo of every woman
who refused to be silenced,
who tore her name from the book
of their making and wrote it
in the stars, in the sky, in the soil
of a world that is not yet theirs.
I will not be their shadow,
their echo, their memory.
I am the voice they fear
in the dark, the breath
that stirs their nightmares,
the light they cannot extinguish.
they cannot control,
the storm that breaks their chains,
the fire that burns their words
to ash, and I will rise,
I will rise, I will rise.
