For within living structures defined by profit, by linear power, by institutional dehumanization, our feelings were not meant to survive. Kept around as unavoidable adjuncts or pleasant pastimes, feelings were meant to kneel to thought as women were expected to kneel to men. But women have survived. As poets. And there are no new pains. We have felt them all already. We have hidden that fact in the same place where we have hidden our power. They surface in our dreams, and it is our dreams that point the way to freedom. Those dreams are made realizable through our poems that give us the strength and courage to see, to feel, to speak, and to dare. —AUDRE LORDE
I tell myself to shut up before i ever utter a word. Before a man inevitably does. Before a lover tells me i’m ruining a moment. I say, shut up, woman. Just write it down. In a text. In a tweet. In a poem. Something easily digestible. To be liked. Shared. Make ’em think you didn’t think but just wrote the thing you don’t have no business thinking or saying in the first place. I have been invited to perform more than I’ve been invited to speak. They want the art not the woman behind it. Want the metaphor not the matriarch. I feel like the world feels like I feel like the angry black woman. My senses tell me to fight. They always have. My senses tell me that physical violence is the only mode of protection that has served me. The world tells me this is wrong. I tell my students this is wrong. I want them to believe it. I want me to believe it. In response to this: I study. I write. I share. With the audacity to exist. To speak. To progress. And the men applaud. And the lovers swoon.