Dear oppressor

Dear oppressor,

Please stand still while I have my way with you
Hold that posture
As I sculpt you into granite
And create for you a frozen stone planet that only you and your kind could inhabit

Don’t even blink
Lest I remember that you are flesh and blood
And not barbed wire woven into a clockwork system
With an automatic timer set to mangle its victims

Don’t smile or cry
Do not look me in the eye
Or I might recall that once you were a child so weak
And that your beauty left your mother void of speech

Don’t let your body speak
Do not let your stomach growl
Or I’ll start to think that from this earth you and I both eat
And that you are not just a robot or a slab of concrete beneath my own very human feet

Don’t even breathe
I forbid any display of being weak
For I might recognize your precarious life
Or consider that you have a story and are a sister, a son, a father, and wife

Dear oppressor,
As I protest for human rights
And raise my fist so high
Let me forget that we are fashioned of the same clay
Let me strip you of your humanity
Hating you is so much easier this way


With a fool's hope,

Bethany Lauren Grigsby