The Red I Became (in Two Acts)

Angry today (2022)

My anger can be timid sometimes.

It has a tendency to hide,

To deny itself any recognition.

You see, it was taught not to be felt.

It was taught not to be appraised.

My anger is a small ball of red,

Lost in a junk drawer somewhere in my head,

Today it needed to be felt.

Today someone did something he shouldn’t have

And my anger was nowhere to be found.

What was that bubbling in the pit of my stomach?

Shame? Pain? Sadness?

Green? Purple? Blue?

Surely couldn’t have been red?

The one thing I was told not to feel.

Anger is harmful, inconvenient, displaced, sublimated.

Anger causes conflict remember?

But the red I felt today was real,

The anger I felt today was natural,

It was bold and visible

No longer timid or hidden.

SHES PREGNANT WITH RAGE (2025)

This anger is euphoric:

This vast red pool 

Where my best friend and I can be girls together

Go down the slip and slide cackling like two kids

Playing mermaids

Coating ourselves 

In righteous red rage

The anger makes us who we are

Defines the lines that we see in our reflections 

Call it feminine rage because my

lips are coated in a deep maroon from

every swear word I scream out of my window

Liberating parts of me I had to hide for so long

My red nails dig into the ground 

I’m stubborn as hell and I will

fuck anyone who takes this anger away from me

I will explain colonialism and the patriarchy,

I will impart lessons on radical feminism, 

I will run away from home, 

Leave my false blue self behind.

Red is the new purple

Blood over bruise

I will howl at the top of my lungs until

I feel scars forming in the back of my throat

Until my eyes are red and swollen

Until I get a fucking nosebleed 

This anger is euphoric. 

The red brick road towards who I was always supposed to be

My ruby red shoes click clack obnoxiously 

An army of women before me

A legion of women follow me

Towards who we are meant be

Our anger has always been a little red marble lost in the back of a drawer

Because he regulates women’s pleasure so particularly, 

and he figured out that red hot rage brought with it absolute mind numbing joy.

As we bite into this perfect loud moment

And feel the sweet sweet petite morte of rage

I’d like to take a moment to mention, 

That my anger was euphoric 

And today as the saccharine scarlet juice drips from my lips

down my throat and between my legs

I have decided to revel in it.