the failings of a surgically healed heart | a collection

5 | feminism is best served sunny side up

i live in the sunniest city in scotland
but myself,
the weather and
the (white) girls in this country,
have nothing
but too much pale skin,
sharpened tongues and
empty minds -
to show for it;
for all this SNP yellow shinning down
on us

i hypothesis: it's because of the rain.
and even though i don't like the summer time; they do.

so i do them a favour.
stand outside one evening in september and
swallow up all torrential downpour,
let it dilute all the red inside of me
don't tell them it's in the hopes i'll have blue veins like them;
like the white girls
who are recycled every generation in this half of the britain

it doesn't work;
all i bleed is tears/ mistake the knife in my back as a leaky faucet
find a teenage version of a girl i knew from primary school
disguised as a friend at the end of it

my bad.
i think my back/i mistook this as home, i say
as i had back the blade.

i walk into a history class,
find it overflowing:
with boys who look like hitler youths
and aryan girls who call themselves feminists
and their best friend's sluts
in the same breath -

later i will discover the implied whiteness of feminism,
something my cousin will tell me
again and again
when she comes over from canada
and explains why she is not a feminist
(that and she's pro-life) -

but before then,
i will befriend these white girls
feel their hands in my hair
without them having asked permission,
they will ask how did i get it like that.
they will ask if it's real, if it's mine

and before i can begin explaining -
they will stray to something less important;
a boy, more often than not
and i will subject myself to this

until i find the five percent of scotland's minorities
in my year.
will befriend all of them
and we will huddle together,
around a table;

call this lunchtime,
will talk about the unfairness of all kinds of womanhood
how in my mother tongue
there is no talk of sexism
but even if i knew the igbo translation for a western concept
it would likely mean nothing

here my best friend,
ginger haired and mightier than the world deserves
talks about the crushing pressure
of good grades and high expectations

here my nigerian friend, from primary school,
who never aged after then
talks of her asexuality and
how still no one believes her.

here one of my white best friend's,
who's been trying to find herself since
i met her
whose heart lives outside her ribcage
talks of slut-shaming by her formerly best friend
and shows me the knife in her back

i show her mine too,
and in this way we are the same,

and our muslim pakistani friend with a scottish accent
who is funny and mean and
has more money than all of us combined,
shows us hers too,

and our american friend who is a republican and
whose "christian" parents voted for trump
and who is clueless but is also kindest person i know,
hugs us all,
upon witnessing an acknowledgement of the same scars -

and what i'm trying to say is that my cousin is wrong
what i'm trying to say is feminism is not like makeup, there is more than one shade
what i am trying to say is
i call myself: a feminist;
i call myself: an intersectional feminist

because of all the friends who are like sisters to me, who i have today.
and for friends i make every day after that.

because of my syrian friend who wears hijab:
who cries in arabic,
shouts in english
and misses home and
her brother and
a time absent of war.

because of the black girl who joined us in senior year
who we did not like for a while
but adopted once we saw the knife in her back too

and what i'm trying to say, is maybe scotland is isn't all
fake warmth and faker tan
maybe some of us are real and some of us are kind.
and these are the ones who i call my friends.

- a poem for the ones i call myself an intersectional feminist for. even if it means white feminists loose interest before i'm done speaking.

--

so this is one of my longest poems and yet i loved every moment of writing it, it was a far more optimistic poem than i had initial planned and a lot to do with the very specific nature of racism in Scotland.