Weapons Of Refusal

Try to capture

While clutching at your chest

A scrap or fragment

Of your hope, lost long ago

Blistering palms

And your knuckles pale, spectral

New death, born timid and

Companionless, hunting immunity

Everyone ceasing their quivering

A desperate and dying wish

Heartbreak to strangle complacency

And banish all prior dusks

Gasping lungs beg

For the fires to cauterize

You huddled in trenches

From the glare of derision

In the jaws of disfavor

Each a daughter of contempt

Who would unsheathe in vengeance

One thousand blades glinting

And bury all cycles of

Abuse, uneulogized

This the only promise

There will be no appeal

For your mercy

Sick with their pride

They will writhe in the gaze

Of their fathers

And howl, crushed by the

Weight of their misdeeds

No one ever mended

Nothing ever reconciled

So sings the choir

Boundless ruin will

Find your captors

Crescent in you, glittering torch of

Those disfigured, with fury renewed

Expel every deceit you swallowed

Choke not on their histories

But flourish

Breathing free air once again

You will undo their works

You will make cinders of their cities

Baring your teeth, wielding the

Weapons of refusal

Matching their violence