Choose Wisely Which Me You Meet

There are two parts of me...

not in conflict,

but in conversation.

One sips quietly like tea,

and offers her wrist gently,

wears her softness like it's sewn into her skin.

She is the girl, the woman they preferred...

demure, clever, a sugar laced storm

that never quite touched the ground.

The other?

is thunder in bare feet.

The one with war braided into her hair.

whose kindness is earned,

not owned.

Both live here.

Born of blood that doesn't match 

a single name on paper.

Lenape, Scots, Congolese smoke,

Jewish wander,

Welsh stone,

Carolina red clay,

stories sewn by hands that spoke 

in silence,

in warnings,

in truths I was never supposed to carry..

... but I do.

I contradict the women before me

just by breathing differently.

By being loud

where they were crushed.

By being still

when I want to tear the walls down.

I am not what you hoped to mold.

You expected quiet?

Then you mocked the silence.

You wanted soft?

Then cursed the day it hardened.

And still...

when I give you the flame

you spent months stroking,

you flinch.

When I speak the truth

you kept calling for

but never prepared to hear,

you recoil.

Do not pat my head.

Do not call me "baby" or "sweetheart"

after you cornered me 

then acted surprised

when I bit back.

I have learned.

I owe no one the gentler version

if they demanded it with teeth.

So let it be known...

I protect me.

And if I raise my voice, 

it's because you mistook

my restraint

for surrender.

My poems may be cryptic to you,

but that's because you've never had to write

with a shaking hand,

with a held tongue,

with a back pressed into tradition

and a heart begging for air.

I am ever changing...

not unstable,

but evolving.

I shed skins

not to forget who I was,

but to honor who I survived.

So the next time you step close,

choose wisely

which me you want to meet..

because I will match your energy

with all the quiet I've unlearned

and all the wildfire I've earned.