Why Are You So Angry?

Poem Transcribed As Performed.

Why are you so angry? One of my friends asked me the other day, I had just spoken about one of the most recent crimes in a town near ours and he asked me why it affected me so much when it didn’t happen to me. It was rape, a teenage girl who was probably in the wrong place and passed the wrong people and did not see the danger until it was too late. I’m angry because this week some little boys in my class found out that I am a virgin. They came up to me snarling as they circled me like vultures attached to the smell of death, “I heard that you”, “So you’ve never-”, “I thought that you-”, I’m angry because they got the news before I did, looking at me like most men in my life, like I am a piece of meat that hasn’t been tasted yet. They look at me like they want to swallow me whole, clamping their teeth down and not bothering to remove the bones. Glancing at one another with smirks as they watch me sit reading a book. “I just didn’t expect it from a girl that looks like you.” One of them says as if it is a compliment, that if I didn’t have morals I would take these guys for all their worth.

I asked my friend, completely uncomfortable with this predicament, why these guys were so fascinated by me and he chuckled as he said you are untouched merchandise. Merchandise, like I am a candy up on the shelf, buy one get one free, ok I think I get it? I am unmarked territory to these boys, my soil is still soft and ripe for harvest but I have no intentions of letting them crop.  I’m angry because I wonder what the man said to the teenage girl before he sunk his teeth into her neck, waiting for her to submit as she asked him why and his reply, because it is easy. I am angry because the top 1% do not bother to wonder what it is like for us. To wonder how we survived with less than 5 dollars in the bank, to live in a dangerous neighborhood because there is no where else to go, or how hard it is to get by but they are willing to get rid of programs that put food on the table and get kids to school because they do not need them and never will. They down size the cause and spill the word to their followers watching them drink it up as we go thirsty.

I am angry because my teachers ignore the derogatory terms shouted throughout the classroom but if I state my outrage with how our country is run, I am told to be respectful and suck it up. I’m too young to understand what is going on but when I see people that look like me bleeding out in their cars while their family watch because they dared to reach for their registration, I think I get a clue.

I am angry because I do not feel safe walking home, when I have to take the long way just to see if the car next to me will stop following. Just stay on the phone a little bit longer, I say to a friend walking a bit faster and thinking if I drop my bag will I be fast enough to get away.

I am angry because adults would rather talk about the newest hit movie than the fact that females between the ages 16 and 19 are more likely to be sexually assaulted. Parents demming that they will finally voice the danger after it happens then before the predator can wrap its claws around naive daughters. I am angry because people believe that protection is covering up and discipline is canceling inheritance. I am angry because now a few drinks means consent.

So, no I am not just angry…I’m terrified.