'never sit on a table'
you scolded time and again
the rationale being that
the dirtiness of the vagina
through underwear and bermudas
would still sully the wood
womens' blood is unclean
or so you believed all your life
if a woman sits on a table
food will never again grace it
i used to wonder if you ever saw
the irony
that from which life springs
how can it also be a symbol of
banishing the sustenance of it?
i suspect never
a glorious revolution when you were a child
gave you nothing but a closed world
a closed mind
i want to blame you for it but
i know i would have been the same person
had we been born together
YOU ARE READING
The Boundaries of 'Woman'
Thơ caA diary of poems about growing up designated-female-at-birth, in a Chinese disapora with colonial roots.
