Patriarchy poisoned her.

Not all at once.
Not with a blade,
but with a thousand quiet lessons
slipped beneath the tongue
until the poison tasted
like truth.

Imagine being so detached from yourself,
from your Womanhood,
that you would turn on her,
she, you.

Me.

Imagine being taught
to look into the mirror
and see yourself as lesser.

To believe a man carries
more intelligence,
more power,
more authority,
more everything
simply because he is a man.

More,
more,
more,

as though maleness itself
were a crown
the rest of us were born
kneeling before.

And so my brilliance
goes unacknowledged.

The brilliance of my brain
measured against
a generalized, imaginary he.

An invisible man
who has never met me,
never sat inside my skin,
never carried the weight
of my becoming

and still somehow
stands taller.

Not because he earned it.

Because he was born
with the right anatomy.

“Power of the P*nis”, she calls it.

What a f*cking spell.
What a vicious piece of Magick
they taught our Mothers
to cast against themselves.

They taught her
that the voice of a man
must carry further.

That his knowing
must be deeper.

That his authority
must be unquestioned.

And she learned it so well
she began handing the lesson
down to me.

Mother to daughter.
Wound to wound.

Generation after generation
of Women taught to sharpen
the knife against their own reflection.

But I..
I will not inherit
the Altar of my own diminishment.

I will not bow
before an imaginary he
just because the world
taught my Mother to.

I will not make myself smaller
so someone else’s masculinity
can feel enormous.

I will not apologize
for the architecture of my mind.

For the fire in it.
For the strange, beautiful machinery
of my knowing.
For the things I understand
that he does not.

For the things she was never allowed
to believe about herself.

Because perhaps this
is the generational curse of all generational curses,

Not simply that men were placed
above Women,
but that Women were taught
to enforce the hierarchy
with their own hands.

So here I stand,
not with hatred for my Mother,
but with a torch.

Because I know now
that some curses
do not break with forgiveness alone.

Some must be named.

Dragged into the light.
Stripped of their Sacred disguise.
And burned at the Crossroads.

I will not become
the Woman patriarchy made her.

I will become
the Woman it could not.

And if I must walk backward
through the bloodline
to find the place
where they first taught a Woman
that she was less,
then so be it.

I will go there.
I will find her.
I will take her face
between my hands
and whisper:

You were never less.
You were never meant
to kneel.
You were taught to.

And I..

I am here
to end the lesson.

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