By Veronika Pister, TIWP student

 

We are still here,

the girl in the back of your Math class,

the best player on the high school lacrosse team,

and the waiter at your favorite restaurant,

still here;

still fighting.

You can’t see the blood on our knuckles because that’s not how

we bear the battle scars.

They are immortalized memories:

the first boy to call us a bitch for not putting out,

the first dinner party that we spent rigidly still in our seat

dressed in formal attire swallowing the hatred

spewing from the mouth of a family friend,

the first joke made at our expense

that made us feel that passion is a character flaw.

I would prefer bloody knuckles.

But no matter how many people tell us “no” in our lifetime,

we will still be here.

And that’s what they hate the most.

For 3,000 years it was so easy to ignore us

But in 2016: even with their cult leader in charge

we will be here.

The fight will endure.

And they hate it because they know

that eventually we win.