Dear overweight man in a
sweatshirt two sizes too big:
I do not care for your ill advised attempt to
impress me by telling tales of your needle-ridden past.
Please take your sexist ideations, your uncomforting gazes,
and your perverted comments somewhere far away
from the space surrounding me.
I am not here to please you,
I am here to make
my mark on the world
as a strong independent woman who has changed the lives of many,
but is in the lives of few.
Your out-dated values
designed to shackle my gender
are not being heard
so you yell them louder,
“Come sit next to me baby,
I’ll keep you safe.”
It’s a cold cold world out there where
anything can hurt you,
but the thing that left
the largest scar was a woman that left you feeling vulnerable.
You felt “less of a man” in a time where gender does not matter
as much as the person behind it.
What gives you the right
to make me feel like I’m less
of a person, and more of a sack
of meat for you to fuck
until you’re done with me,
then left there to rot?
Dear overweight man in a
sweatshirt two sizes too big:
You are a poison to man as a whole, and I wish people knew that you’re not what a man is supposed to be.
Marisa Gonzalez is a young writer and poet in the Bay Area. She sells J/K fashion, jewelry, and accessories on Etsy and Poshmark (find her with the tag @rainbowpotatoecat), and runs a snack cart (dressed as a cat!) that will be in local farmers markets and flea markets in the Berkeley/ Oakland area this October.