They called me witch before
It is easier to fear a woman who
knows the language of roots,
Odysseus came ashore wearing
They remember how I turned
Some men arrive already rooting
already tusked with entitlement,
already convinced every island
is another body waiting to be entered.
My spells, my magic, were never
I merely stripped away the skin they
mistook for civilization.
Centuries later they paint me
pouring poison into the sea.
They never recognize mourning when it
The water glows because every curse
She was another woman standing
had already decided value
We were both condemned long
One became a monster of flesh.
The other, a monster of memory.
There are prisons built of stone.
There are prisons built of beauty.
It does not look but consumes.
It arrives clothed as worship while
It praises your mouth because it
imagines silence afterward.
It crowns you goddess only until
Then it reaches for words older than
witch, temptress, harlot, monster.
They hung those names around my neck
Do you know what it is to be
until your own reflection
no longer belongs to you?
searches only for himself?
your solitude mistaken for availability,
your refusal mistaken for cruelty?
So I learned another language
with plants never lied to me.
The sea never mistook my body for
Odysseus left my island believing
knowing the world would always fear
the woman who unmasks beasts more
than the beasts themselves.
I am emptying centuries of being looked at
The sea turns green because grief has its own color.
it was because every torch
carried to my door came looking
not for wisdom, but for possession.
Do not ask whether I was good.
world creates women whose only
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