Kirby's Poetry

Does Your Mama Know

Note: this is a slam poem, often read out loud

Does your mama know what you say to me
Every day as I walk home from school?
Your words like a cold slap across my face,
Nipping my heels as I walk past you at a faster pace.
 
Does your mama know how hard you try to catch my eyes
As they fall towards the pavement in an effort to avoid your stare?
Do you understand that I don't want to talk to you?
Do I need to say it?
I DON'T WANT TO TALK TO YOU

Does your mama know that I pull what little RBF I have forward
Hoping that today you'll get the memo?
Hoping today will be the day you won't tell me to smile more.
I smile a lot.
But your face makes me hide it in my pocket,
'Cause if it's out, you'll take it as an excuse to touch me. 

Does your mama know that I almost followed your cracking voice home,
Planned on waiting till you dropped your school bag off
And followed your comrade to your room?
Does she know how badly you were torturing me?
How much I felt like telling you off, but I held my tongue and kept on walking?

Does your mama know I run between the glow of streetlamps,
Only feeling slightly safer when I'm in their yellow ray and out of the darkness that holds your sickening figure?
Holding my keys in between each white knuckle like Wolverine's claws,
Just in case you follow me to my car.

Does your mama know that even before I began my journey into womanhood,
I carried that black pocket knife my dad gave me for whittling
In the front pocket of my jeans whenever I went across the street to the park
Or took the dog out for a walk,
Because I knew you'd be lurking along my path?

Does your mama know how many times I've told you No,
Fuck off?
Leave me alone?
Given you a blank stare, hoping you'd see the movie in my eyes
Of me ripping out your vocal cords in an effort to get you to shut up?

Your mama knows what it's like to fear like I do.
Did you know that?

Did you know that your mama fought for her life?
That the only reason she gave birth to your sorry ass and not some stranger's child,
Was because she could get to her pepper spray in time?

Your mama knows what it's like to be whistled at,
To be told to smile.
To be told to take it as a compliment,
To have her body's value be stripped away by your kind.

Your mama knows it all too well.
Your sister knows,
Your cousin knows,
Your aunt,
Your niece,
Your grandmother,
Your wife,
Your future daughter.
We all know it like a burning scar on the back of our hands.
Those words and gestures have their own little spot in the back of our brains.

I don't want to talk to you
I don't want to give you my number
I don't want to know how much you could please me

I want to wear what makes me comfortable
I want to walk wherever the road takes me
I want to feel like my body is more than an object

Does your mama know that you won't let me walk home in peace?