I Hear there's a Bounty On my Womb

BEAUTIFUL! POEM by Gina Puorro #roevwade

I hear there’s a bounty on my womb. A high price in the currency

In the currency of violence and cowardice.

You want to make a home in this body.

Penetrate it with your power and lust and demand I carry the seed you’ve planted pretending to protect the sacred when we both know your concern is for birth and not for life.

I’ve seen the way you watch as young mouths go unfed as young arms are torn from their mother’s embrace as young bodies are raped and ravaged and locked away in the land of the free and home of the brave.

You read me ghost stories from the good book about purity and innocence and all the ways my body is wrong and all the ways my body does not belong to me.

But I prefer different fairy tales. The ones that were woven from an ancient mother’s womb whispered to her from deep in the earth.

The ones that teach me that I am fire and water that I am land and thunder that I am holy and sacred that I am the great creator and destroyer that I belong to me and only me and I alone will decide.

I hear there’s a bounty on my womb but you seem to forget that I am the huntress and I can smell the fear dripping from your cowardly words and I dare you to try and hold my fire in your bare, trembling hands.

- Poem by Gina Puorro

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