Where has my voice gone?
Why can't I speak up
In my own defense?
I fear the girl
Who was once encouraged
To become a lawyer
No longer exists,
That she has fallen
Before a lifetime
Of attacks
And humiliations.
Where is my spine,
Once steely in its resolve
To conquer the world,
Or at least
The one small part of it
That I inhabit?
Is this what adulthood is?
A seemingly endless cycle
Of defeat and discouragement?
Yet, with a throat grown hoarse
From crying out,
And a spine too fragmented
To stand upright,
I continue to fight
For the right
For every part of me
To exist and thrive
In a place often
Too arrid
For acceptance.