Woman Within Me

I have been

A prisoner for so long

I forget my crime sometimes

Sometimes

I forget

To conceal with cosmetics

My darker desires

Or

To braid in my reckless mane

Mundane bourgeois burdens

Forgive me

When

My sooted eyes

Fail to vitiate my vision

Or when

My

Shiny shackles

Betray your bigotry

Or

For when

My pious pollen

Is purged and plucked by you

Or

When

These panopticon premises

Lose their banal vigil

And also

For all those times

When oceans dry

And numb hurts

I try treason

But her manners are malign

And eyes arson

This woman within me

Ahe bleeds

And breathes

And perishes

And persists

This woman within me

But you must

Forgive

Her cloudless crime

For she is

Just a woman within me.