Abrasive

I am abrasive.

I am armed to the teeth with knives of hand and mind and fangs and quips behind these lips so it can be unwise to tell me to smile.

So despite a love/hate relationship with the word I have an abrasive personality,

But then I came by it honestly.

I inherited it from my mother though not right away, it lay dormant in my genetics until it evolved out of all the things I didn’t say

A sad, skinny little girl dressed up in fish-nets and angry at the world

“not like other girls” but somehow I was still the one who was abrasive and mad when my mates were just lads being lads.

Abrasive, bracing, bossy, forthright

And surely I have cried, though never for you, an endless sea of salt tears that eroded me into something new.

So then suddenly I was armed to the teeth, ready for battle, oh Morrigan they still had me beat on the inside

But when they asked I’d say I didn’t take no shit.

Abrasive, a pseudo-intellectual adjective that translates as: bitch.

And sure, I don’t just have resting bitch face I have proactive bitch face.

I walk at night with chin high and lips tight.

This is my armour.

So when you and your pack swagger towards trying to intimidate me into scuttling back I am not impressed.

Don’t ask me to relax you haven’t earned the right to see this bitchy face at rest.

Don’t think for a second that I’ll pull punches because you have friends

Or think that your ignorance is cute – my mother taught me better

I have pulled up all my roots before and I could to it again

Just the girl who doesn’t think you’re funny, won’t take your shit

It is simply the case that I can no longer smile when I want to spit

And that makes me abrasive, aggressive, difficult, uptight

It doesn’t matter that I’m right, or all the tears I had to hide or the times I let myself be bullied or that I’d protect those I love until I died because I would still be abrasive in your eyes.

And I’ll accept that, and I’ll own it,

I am the ocean and you are a cliff that might seem taller now

But the ocean will outlast it.