I wear tight fitting underwear
under my oversized clothes.

Will people know my softness,
my truth?

The firm, uncomfortable holding
offers a kind of security.
Keeps me in.
Keeps me together.

Please,
keep me together.

Maybe I will be shaped
into the ideal of a woman.
Straight up and down,
no mark to show of experience.

What a shame for her.

What is this shame I wear?

I have been cut open,
more than once.
As if the scars that remain
could be more beautiful
than the form nature bestowed.

I think of that soft skin.

That soft
perfect
skin.

That soft, perfect skin
that carries my history,
in scars,
in choices,
I now celebrate.

I celebrate.

Fuck, that feels good.

Burning the tight undergarments
that misshape
my shape.

Who is misshaped,
thinking they can sell us
what we never needed?

It was wild women.

Fully embodied.
Unapologetic
in their acts of unveiling and creation.

Mothers held me
as I bared my breasts to the waves,
my underbelly to the forest.
Teeth bared,
eyes wide,
bodies contorting
in the name of womanhood.

It was wild women.
It has always been wild women.

Dancing in defiance.
Shrieking at their own oppression.
Calling out to me
in voices I had forgotten,

now remembered
because they sang my name.

Reclaiming my truth.

My truth.

No longer surviving
hidden under oversized clothes,
or shaped
by tight fitting underwear.