They tried to measure my circumference
with their tired old tools—
callipers and checkboxes,
surveys that reduce a life
to data points on a screen.

Woman. Black. Young. Poor.
Check here if you’re broken.
Check here if you’re angry.
Check here if you’ve been failed.
Tell us your trauma in 500 characters or less.

They want me to fit inside their equations,
a perfect circle they can chart and predict,
but I keep spilling over the edges
of every definition they draw.

You are too much, they say.
You are not enough.
Stay within your radius.
Don’t take up more space than we’ve allotted.

Listen—
You don’t know me
You can’t count the hairs on my head
You can’t shape me, of course you can’t
You can’t define who I am
and who I will be

I am not a damned perfect circle—
I’m messy and chaotic,
building life from mire, clay and steel,
finding diamonds in the rough
where you only saw wasteland

I am not a number on a scale,
not a diagnostic code,
not a statistic in your report on
“women like me”

I refuse your measurements
I will not shrink myself
into the circumference you’ve decided
is appropriate for my existence

They slap labels on me like price tags,
try to calculate my worth
in degrees and angles,
but I am unmeasurable

I overflow every boundary
you try to draw around me

My circumference is my own to define—
wild, irregular, constantly expanding,
and entirely beyond
your need to quantify me

I wasn’t designed for the centre
For control, for boundaries
I’m always on the edge

 

 

 

 

 

Photo by Tobe Mokolo on Unsplash