A Country of Her Own

They call it a skirt.

I call it a ruler

someone else carved in secret,

then pressed into my palm

and named my choosing.

A girl learns early

which inch of her is scripture,

which inch is scandal

while the boy beside her

walks through the world unmeasured,

still called good, still called whole.

They wrote a law

that never once said woman,

only indecent act

so tell me,

whose hand turned a hemline

into a sin?

I have heard the mothers say it too, softly,

like a blessing that isn't one:

of course she dresses for him,

for his eyes to feast on

as if her body

was fabric cut for an audience

she never auditioned for.

Now she checks a mirror

that isn't even in the room.

She dresses for applause

long before she dresses for herself,

and somewhere, a sanction waits

for the ones who don't.

But a girl is not an echo.

She is a whole country of her own

with wants that were never a request,

with dreams that owe no one an explanation,

with a body that belongs first,

and only, to her.

She does not need a man's eyes

to make her real,

and she has the right

to walk through her one life

in whatever she chooses to wear it in.

They call this a small fire,

a handful of loud women,

a trend that will burn out online.

But it was always a handful

who first said let us in

to the land, the classroom, the table

before the rest of us

learned to walk through the door

they left open.

This is not only the street.

It is the pew

that tells her when her voice

becomes too much.

It is the field

she waters but will never own.

It is the clinic room

where her body is a subject

debated by everyone

but her.

We hold our laws up to the light

like proof we have arrived

but a law is only ink

until it moves

through a dinner table,

until it lives

in what a father

still teaches his son

to notice, and to spare.

I am not afraid of the skirt.

I am afraid of how gently,

how easily,

we called it that,

folded it small,

and looked away.

 Rugo,

A Piece of My Heart on Paper.