Let Go and let GOD

the secretary of my fate
i take messages and bring tea
type my destiny in short hand
resigned to taking the stick's short end
at the end of the day i go home
 All i got is my struggle

my word is collateral for some debt to lesser known gods
even the time i have is borrowed
and look i've lost my childhood too
the power was cut all thats left is the light of hope
All i got is my struggle

i met someone looking for love
well, love don't live here no more
claims she can't live in the same house with bitterness, neglect and lies
even when i made a room for her special with a bed and everything
All i got is my struggle

my thoughts will forever be secrets
my moments personal
the crowds i get lost in painful reminders
the night my comfort
ALl i got is my struggle

... so help me God.

The Changeling's Lament

by Shira Lipkin 

I have studied so hard
to pass as one of you.
I've spent a lifetime on it.

I have tells.
Blisters, tremors, bruises,
all the signs that I was not meant for your world,
was not meant to be contained
in your clothes,
your shoes.
I have this terribly inconvenient allergy
to cold iron.
Hives, really.
Welts.
I stand out.

When I was little,
I asked my alleged mother,
what's a girl?

She said
you,
you're a girl,
and she laced me into dresses
(that I tore off in the school parking lot,
in line for the bus).
Laced me into ballet shoes
that left blisters
and bloodied my feet
until I had calluses.
Which she had filed off,
beauticians pinning me down,
because it's not beauty
if you don't bleed.

My dancing was different.
My dancing was swaying treelike,
or launching myself across the room,
spinning madly,
but that is not what girls do,
not human girls,
not ladylike,
not contained.

And everything
is about containment
is about being delicate
and pretty
laced into corsets
whalebone stays digging into your ribs
because it's not beauty
if it doesn't hurt.

But I studied.
I pretended.
I hid the bruises
and the tics.
I hid the big dark parts of me.
I tamed my hair.
I watched my mouth.
I hid my magic.
I did not speak of such things
because we do not speak of such things –
not anger,
not homesickness,
not longing.
Not this sense
that I don't know what the hell
a human girl is
and I can tell, I can,
that everyone knows I don't belong here.
I laugh too loud;
I am too fast or slow to laugh.
I am an anthropologist in the field of girl.
I study
but none of it
ever comes
naturally.