By Flare Henry Tieszen
You have great childbearing hips
The church women told me at thirteen
You’ll make a man very happy one day
I was told at fourteen
Cover up your body, you are going to cause these men to stumble
They demanded of me when I was fifteen
I can still feel their hands tugging at my clothes
Their tongues clicking in disapproval anytime I walked by when I was sixteen
At seventeen I knew I did not want any daughters
Not after the humiliation I had to suffer at the hands of older women, my own mother doing nothing to protect me
At eighteen I decided that I did not want any sons either
The church men were not any better.
Flare Henry Tieszen is a 32-year-old gender-fluid individual who lives in the Pacific Northwest of the U.S. with their two wonderful partners and three dogs. They are a full-time registered nurse and use poetry to explore themes of love, depression, disassociation, and returning to oneself after the COVID-19 pandemic.