Screaming from the rooftops

I screamed from the rooftops today

I screamed as loud as I could.

My closest and dearest all to the furthest and coldest could hear my voice; but they tilted their head in disbelief.

I am not a screamer.

I am relatively a quiet woman. Being silent in my struggle is what I do. When you’re on the very bottom of the social construct;

You learn your struggles mean nothing to others

Hell you’d be lucky to be perceived as human; let alone a person.

I saw the smoke.

I screamed from the rooftops today again.
Not metaphorically
I mean I climbed there,
Splinters in my hands and the wind in my throat,
I screamed until my voice cracked into pieces
Small enough to fall between the cracks of your attention.

I screamed loud enough
To be heard through the walls of their certainty,
To be heard through the hymns of “it will be alright,”
To be heard through their scrolling and shrugging…The careful distance from discomfort.

I screamed loud enough…again
to reach the ones who love me
and the ones who only tolerate me
and the ones who have already decided
my fear is an exaggeration.

I said “Look!”
I said “Listen”
I said “This is coming!”

But my voice…my voice wore the wrong body.

It came wrapped in undesirable skin and in woman’s urgency,

In a tone you’ve been trained to call
“too much,”
“too emotional,”
“too loud” before it’s necessary.

So you turned the volume down on me
before I ever raised it.

And now…

Now the ground trembles
just enough for you to feel it through your own feet.

Now the words are safer,
passing through someone else’s mouth

In your vague memory even though it came from me
It’s cleaner somehow,
more credible,
less coming from observant quiet me.

“Oh, I heard about that…”
you say, casually…
like it wasn’t carved into my throat a year ago.

“Oh, someone mentioned that project…”

Someone.

Someone.

Someone.

And I stand there flushed in irritation
holding the echo of my own voice like broken glass
wondering what part of me
you needed to disappear
before my warning could become real.

I am not angry because I was right.

I am angry because
I was ignored intentionally & correctly.

Dismissed precisely.
Overlooked with skill.
Filed under “later”
until later arrived wearing consequences waving a gun

Do you know what it feels like to watch a storm you named become believable only after it rains?

Do you know what it costs to scream into a world that edits you out in real time?

I screamed from the rooftops today…
but not to warn you.

No.

Today, I screamed to hear myself again.

To remind my own bones that I was never quiet.

That I was never wrong.

That the silence you gave me
was never proof of absence
only evidence
of who you were willing to hear