I see yet another newspaper headline.
Yet another Instagram article.
Yet another tweet.

I see a woman
Her eyes squeezed shut,
Her mouth biting down on a cloth,
Her throat covered in blood.

My breath hitches;

I am thrown into a black hole
Switching time-zones,
Switching eras, going centuries forward
And centuries behind.

I am a woman in Auschwitz;
Being dragged away from my children,
Scintillating screams, shattered dreams-
Gas chambers loom in front of my eyes,
The tapestry of my life being ripped-

Thread
By
Thread.

Glitch.

I am a thirty year old woman.
My voice is acid in my throat,
It burns and scalds every cell.
Sometimes, it’s stolen away from me
Completely.

Tales of harassment and abuse,
Seek a pathway,
Only to reach a dead-end.

Selective amnesia-
I forget how to speak.
I remember every crime
My body has been a victim to.

Glitch.

I am a thirteen year old
Stuck in a pandemic.
My childhood snatched from my grasp,
It disintegrates as I try desperately to
Hold on to whatever is left of it.

I barely know what life means-
But no, I have to learn about death
Before I learn how to live.

Glitch.

I am a black woman in the time of the
Great Depression.
Food eludes me,
Sleep is probably an imaginary creation.
Depression is something
That settles in my stomach and mind together.

My skin decides my fate,
More than anything I say.

Glitch.

.

I drag myself out of the blackhole
That comes for me
Like a vulture to a lonely deer.

I am left staring at a newspaper headline.
An Instagram article.
A tweet.
This is how,
Every day,
I learn to find my purpose.

No matter how tempting it is,
To give up,
I remember those women before me
Who forgot to rebel.
Or the women, who could not rebel.

I live for myself, yes,
But I also live for those women,
Those strong, strong women
Who could not live their lives.

Who forgot to live their lives.