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I cannot afford the diplomacy you cherish.
My life depends on my voice,
my body depends on my ability to side-step
groping hands.
If you treat me like dirt, I will rise like a mountain
and if you calmly, quietly, politely tell me I am nothing
I will shout in your face who and what I am.
I have no shame for those words I said
because I've never let my social standing
determine what I say.
The pain and the tears were real.
I screamed not just out of anger
but out of fear,
fear that you, with your middle-class
ethic
could write my place out,
could look at me and see nothing
and thus make me nothing.
Your diplomacy is hypocrisy
polite to those whom it serves you to be polite
and just ever so slightly rude to everyone else.
I am more than slightly rude because I have to be to survive
because if I mouth the words I am supposed to mouth
I am erased, my past
is erased, my people are erased.
I can't afford your diplomacy.
I can't afford silence.
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