How can i think,
when i sit in classrooms built by men
to teach us how to think like them,
and i try—
god, i try to conjugate freedom
in a language that was never mine,
in a room that doesn't feel like home,

If only i had smiled differently,
worn a different skirt, a longer one,
if i had stayed quiet, let him win,
shrunk smaller, been easier to touch,
been harder to hurt, laughed when i wanted to cry,
cried when i wanted to scream.

I did not know kindness isn't always loud, 
not the grand gestures, not the 
throw-the-coat-over-a-puddle, 
because sometimes 
it is simply someone sitting on the ground