These have lips too

I have a story to tell.

About the things I have seen and the history I know.

I remember being so young I hardly knew I existed, being so insignificant that nobody my age saw it, or knew that I was a piece of the puzzle upon this body.

I remember growing up a little bit older each year, when I learned that not everybody resembled me, I can hear the lessons being taught about how there are two types of people.

I know better now.

That there is so much in between, but that I lay on one end of the spectrum – and it shows.

I remember feeling embarrassed for growing hair.

I remember being ashamed for letting a coat of red stain the world I am bound to.

I remember when I knew people would pay me less for my being present.

Just for my very being, this mound of flesh, private to the average person, I am deemed less than.

I remember not being taught properly how to use myself, how I would get lost within the possibilities of myths and legends of what lied within me.

I remember a jackhammer job with long, sharp nails forgotten to be clipped away. A terrifying event that forced me to shrivel and avoid any contact for months out of fear.

I don’t blame the brain, it didn’t know any better, how could it when nobody ever told it how.

I remember exploring.

I remember grinding into the music, moving with the hips in circles and a push and pull that teased the predators I chose to ignore as I ventured into the plains of my power.

I remember disoriented nights of men who parted my lips and took what they wanted, without hesitation about if I had any mutual feelings.

I remember hiding from darkness in strobe lights because I couldn’t stay away from the nightlife, but I couldn’t live in the darkness where they had found me most vulnerable.

But then I remember a woman, so soft, and daring. she kissed me after an hour of taking her time to memorize the constellations of patterns on my skin and I listened to the rhythm she had pounded into me of our breath coming in and out of one another until I didn’t know where I started and she began.

I remember that I didn’t need the disco balls blaring light to protect me from the dark when I had a sun of a woman in front of me, her rays so powerful that upon her touch I illuminated as though I was made up of a perpetual tangled mess of fairy lights. Where one by one they were a lit with her glow, before erupting into a blinding blaze.

I remember wishing I wasn’t real, that I could transform into clay to be moulded into a stronger form, more worthy of respect and love and fortune I had long been robbed of (before a girl with blue hair taught me otherwise.)

This is my story.

And so long I’ve been silent, that I’m taking the space I deserve to tell it now.

After all vaginas can speak too.