Showing posts with label No One Else Gets to Define You. Show all posts
Showing posts with label No One Else Gets to Define You. Show all posts

Sunday, September 29, 2019

Enough


How we hated Lamonts,
my aunt and I,
as her sister—my mother,
her mother—my grandma,
shopped and tried
on somebody else’s
soon-to-be clothes.

It was the smell,
we said,
or the way
it made us feel
confined

or defined
by dress or bra or shoe.

And leave to breathe,
fairly sprinting to her car,

in search of that bright patch of sky
that agreed
we were already enough.


© 2019 Jennifer Wagner

Wednesday, January 7, 2015

Eggshells


I won't play your eggshell game.

It's a drag
and you can't hold me hostage
anymore

from who I am,
from who I am meant to be,

from happiness.

Honestly, it's rude,
and you continue to behave childishly,

demanding things
on your own selfish terms.

Meanwhile,
I am making new loves

and they don't require that I tiptoe,

they say,
give it all you got, girl,

go ahead,
crunch.


© 2015 Jennifer Wagner


For Poetry Jam: One Word. My word is “Freedom,” written about obliquely.

Wednesday, October 15, 2014

Judgment


I was
one thing
to you only.
One thing.

How could I bear
the weight of
all you could
never see of me?


© 2014 Jennifer Wagner