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This Is What Justice Looks Like

Walking Home

By: Madeline T.

They ask what justice looks like to me
while holding me down and
telling me who I am.
They tell me to speak up,
to share my
visions
while forcing a gag into my mouth
and telling me to watch
my language.
They tell me to let it out,
and yet they put me in a position
where I can’t
speak
my best friend’s pain,
my mother’s childhood
my own fears,
living in a world where
walking home can’t be
safe.
I am pulled from every side,
this way,
that way,
backwards,
forwards,
left,
right,
told to choose
who I am,
but how can I choose when who I am doesn’t fit into
the system,
the binary:
boy or girl,
gay or straight,
victim or
perfectly normal.
I am not a victim,
but I am not
unharmed.
I once wrote that I was a
canvas.
Pure, white, blank,
yet blackened over time by the touches and looks of
thousands
who don’t see who I am,
who don’t assume that I’m
a geek
or a slut.
They ask me what justice looks like to me.
They give me a place to share my voice, my words.
They give me an inch.
I won’t take a mile, but I’ll stretch that inch as far as it will go.
A world
where I am looked at as a human,
where I am asked who I am, not given a label,
where I can say that I’m bi, and not be told that I’m wrong,
where I can say that I’m pansexual and people will understand,
where I can say that I’m not a girl and not a boy,
but that I love my body the way that it is,
where I can say that I used to be blank canvas,
and that I’m the one who chose to change that,
where people don’t ask first if I have a boyfriend,
where people don’t wonder first if I’m a virgin,
where I’m not labeled a prude if I am,
where I’m not labeled a whore if I’m not,
where my mother can live without being haunted my the past,
where she doesn’t have to remind me to be safe walking home every day,
where my father doesn’t have to give my boyfriend’s “the talk,”
where he doesn’t have to worry about what I’m wearing to a dance,
where my best friend doesn’t feel the need to hide what she went through,
where she doesn’t have to beg me not to tell anyone or find her help.
A world where I can feel just as confident as the boys on my street
and not afraid to let my little sister walk home alone:
That’s what justice looks like to me.

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