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21-year-old London poet Charly Cox has been writing a poem a day for the month of January and posting them to her 30k Instagram followers. Here, we share Charly's poem for today – the day women are marching for their rights across the world as the man who grabs women "by the pussy" takes his seat in the White House.
"Tell Me, Sir" by Charly Cox
Tell me, sir
Explain it loud and clear
Shout your most direct
Explicit fears
Scream them until
The decibels reach parallel
To the clang and clatter in my heart
Until you can rage each syllable
So pointedly you can throw your voice like a sharpened dart
And throw it for me
Speak for me
Times those fears by ten
Then times them by one hundred
And one thousand and again
Keep multiplying what shakes you
Until it becomes so monstrous
So tangible and noxious
That it no longer feels like fear
It just feels constant
Familiar
Monotonous
Like you've spent your life rehearsing
For a nightmare
As the understudy
Never quite enough for the part
Because you don't qualify as somebody
Like you've learnt every line
As though what you feel is fiction
And you'll never get the lead as someone
Whose script is written with conviction.
Tell me, sir
Explain it loud and clear
Explain it so loudly my unborn daughter can hear
Project your voice into the future
If you can impregnate me with these lost morals
You're free to rape me just as quick
And then what happens if you conceive more than fear ?
What happens if I don't want that kid?
Your future is bubble wrapped
And I'm held punishable for it.
Try and tell me that you're scared
As you bang my head on the glass ceiling
And drag me by my hair
Through statements like
SHE ASKED FOR IT
I'm pretty sure I didn't...
Pretty sure I'm pretty more
Than a pretty face to be ignored
Tell me, sir
Explain it loud and clear
Because I’m lost
Wandered down too many paths
With no roads for me safe enough to cross
Without carrying my keys like a weapon
Been employed in so many places
Where I'm a disposable body on a ladder to step on
Tell me, sir
Mr, why are your Mrs
Missing out?
Why do you consider us so little ?
Who was the man that taught you
To grow into this man so bitter
Dishing out
What I can and cannot be?
Who was the man that showed you a lesser being
And why was that lesser being me?
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