Crystal Leaverton’s Womanifestos
This is a piece I wrote seven years ago about my feelings about adjusting to college life. It's faltering and the composition is awkward and ill-fitting — but so were my emotions at the time. At the time I penned this I was just starting to feel some stirrings of activism and responsibility therein.When I share this with women I know now who are involved in movements close to my heart I find that this piece mirrors many of their experiences. Trying to choose between being what you've garnered from society to be acceptable and that voice that rings in your ears that, no matter how much you try to silence it, tells you, yells at you that you're stronger than you think.
I don’t want your breath.
It changes —
Like your heart —
With each breathing.Have another drink, whydontcha?
I am chastity no longer,
And you can't have me —
Or charm me —
With your, ‘baby baby baby’s.This one’s on the house.
You can’t read my soul
With your fingertips.
Against the will of my heart,
My skin is soft.One more won't kill you.
Womanifesto Two:
This piece was written for my cousin Laura. She was raped and beaten to death by a gang of 4 people in western Washington state in April 1998.
She never feared the woods.
This mousy overweight stepchild
With hair that hung limply, like twine,
Over her hunched too-tall shoulders;
And whose intellect,
Quite like her bust,
Never fully developed.They raped our name
And shattered the small town serenity
That had coddled her as a child
And taunted her as a youth.They turned the pines to redwood —
The ground lapped up her life,
The essence of her spirit
And fed it to the trees —
Where she resides Forever.
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