Poetry by Elizabeth Ruth Deyro
To be a woman of color
To be a woman of color
is to walk along the edge, tiptoeing your way through,
wanting so badly to make a sound but trying
not to because you know
too well that silence and noise are
no different when no one ever listens.
To be a woman of color
is to be a warrior
fighting many battles at once—ones you
did not start but can never lose
even when you’ve always been
at the losing end.
You have bled so many times since your becoming,
but none of that had primed you for the bloodshed
that is your life—in the hands of men who do not know how to hold you right,
of the people who do not know how else to get to know you but to
rip
you
apart and examine what is
underneath
this brown flesh.
Now tell me, after you unravel my body
do I look more like you dismantled?
To be a woman of color
is to walk along the edge, tiptoeing your way through,
wanting so badly to make a sound but trying
not to because you know
too well that silence and noise are
no different when no one ever listens.
To be a woman of color
is to be a warrior
fighting many battles at once—ones you
did not start but can never lose
even when you’ve always been
at the losing end.
You have bled so many times since your becoming,
but none of that had primed you for the bloodshed
that is your life—in the hands of men who do not know how to hold you right,
of the people who do not know how else to get to know you but to
rip
you
apart and examine what is
underneath
this brown flesh.
Now tell me, after you unravel my body
do I look more like you dismantled?
Elizabeth Ruth Deyro is a Filipina writer, editor, and Communication Arts undergraduate at the University of the Philippines Los Baños. She is the Founding Editor-in-Chief and Creative Director of The Brown Orient, the Fiction Editor of Rag Queen Periodical and |tap| lit mag, and the Nonfiction Editor of Cauldron Anthology. Her work has appeared in or is forthcoming from Ellipsis Zine, Black Napkin Press, Jellyfish Review, {m}aganda Magazine, L’Éphémère Review,and The Tempest, among other places.
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