In the 24 Karat Cage
Pity is sympathy without respect.
It’s all you can offer them,
in this moment, knowing they have the power to break free, watching them laugh and throw blood-painted broken glass at any who dares to fly too close; a punishment for flaunting what they won’t take.
She’ll swear someday that you can never know how hard it is to be a real woman. You’ll pray together that she continues to believe such nonsense, but you’ll pray to different deities for different reasons.
You’ll pray to the God of Forgetfulness to be seen. They’ll pray to the Goddess of Fertility to be overlooked.
Thick, oily sweat makes the gold dust into a glitter paste they hope will hide their chest from the world.
The bars of the cage are thinner, softer, sharper than number 2 pencils needed to take any test they might fail.
They would crumble if pressed with the force needed to puncture skin with a needle.
Many hands cannot press hard enough to break through that soft surface, even if the syringe holds medicine needed to live.
No one teaches us how to do this. We learn or we die.
Their hands can’t find the pressure to take freedom, so they sit comfortably with the white of cake icing or bird droppings hitting their shoulders regularly from above; They’ll swear they like it this way.
It all tastes the same to them, as long as it doesn’t shift the balance of weight to muscle reflected in her ring.
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- The story behind the poem can be found below:
