I love my job.
I work a nine to five like the rest,
But I'm the only one in the office
who has to deal with a cycle.
I feel the presence of all their lingering eyeballs,
And the unwanted touches,
And the focus on my curves.
The off-putting remarks
And the words that I say that go unheard.

I love my job but,
I don't enjoy it here
Squatting on this island.
This isolation only feeds the friction I feel when I walk through those doors.
This place I once called my second home.
I feel unwanted when I roam,
Longing for belonging,
In a place where I have essentially given my life.
To be thought of as less than,
Treated as less than.

I want to love my job but,
I don't know if I can work in this place anymore.
Where I scream
To be returned with silence.
Is that our dialogue?
A place where my peers embody allegories of freedom
Whilst I am restricted to my path of thin ice.

Is it only because I'm a woman?
Is this even reasonable to ask?
No, this must be some sort of sick joke that I can't even understand;
Because no one would do this without a reason.

In this modern day
This all seems like a piece of ancient history
Particularly the sick and twisted fantasies of normal people of the past.
A past sown deeply into the fabric of society.
A past written about with rose coloured glasses,
Opening windows to simpler times.
Times where my voice
would have been blasphemous.
A voice silenced by most.
A voice not even heard by many.
A voice that barely whispers
From every soapbox it gets to tell this tragedy.
A voice so frail.
Yet it rattles this fragile shell that I'm left with.

What remains.
What keeps the ignition turned on.
This fire that spurs me on to survive;
I survive,
But barely.
What is it even worth
If I return to suffer again?
This has truly broken me.
I am nothing.

This has made me what you see.
This has made me what you hear.
This has made me who I am,
To envy the lives of princesses.
This is not fiction.
This is reality.
This is my reality.
This is my story.