On voice. And what it takes to wield it.

I have had my voice stuffed down my throat, like a magician’s scarf never seen until called for. I have sat on my feelings, pressing down the odd lumps and bulges desperately nudging, wanting to be acknowledged, until it felt somewhere near tolerable and nowhere near comfortable.

I have torn apart my own words. I have poked holes in them, wiggled my fingers through them and made unhappy, unloved runs: not good enough, not right enough, not placid enough, not calm enough.

I have tugged at my own cheeks in the mirror, putting them through a military inspection in which they would consistently fail: too chubby, too blotched, too brown.

Too brown, too brown, too brown.

I have undersold the power of my own mind. I have apologized for my anger, stepped backward and let the puddles of my disappointment with my continued compliance, my dearly bought silence, slosh about my ankles and muddy my hem, dragging my steps behind me as I retreated from another confrontation.

It is a struggle, being in a body that you are told, you are chided, you are lovingly coaxed, to see as Other.

To know as unfamiliar, unknown. Outside of the tapestry of what is and what should be. A blotch. A snag in the thread.

It is a struggle to take up your voice between your fingers, to see it as not a shapeless mass of cloth (your aunt’s shalawar kameez she was coaxed, taunted, condemned into reserving for the house, your scarf that has been tugged at, yanked at, scorned) but a bird you need to cradle and hold, so gently, in your palms, to feel its little heart beating at a fast tempo and know that if you can settle it, settle you, and let it free, it has the ability to soar, to wheel, to shame those who tried to take its wings and break them between careless fingers.

It is a struggle to find the right words, every time, when you feel you are saying the same words, and less beautifully every time. They feel like mud sliding over your tongue and dripping out from between your fingertips. You are embarrassing yourself, by reminding everyone of who you are, how different you are, insisting that it is something to be proud of, to live, to write about, to sing about, to soar and wheel about and find beauty and pride in.

It is a struggle to speak on that struggle, when others underscore your experiences and your body and your external differences and bullet point them, write them down in blue pen as they would a grocery list: reminding everyone of how different you are, how proud they are of writing about you, how you can fly on their borrowed wings — every feather a different, wrong, weighty obligation to them for acknowledging you, for the ways they see you, the ways you aren’t and have never been but they say you are.

It is a struggle to use that newfound voice, to coax out that little, bone-light, thin-blooded bird to settle on your shoulder, and have it sing songs that are not mere empty, unmeant praise or thankfulness that you really cannot have for something that you aren’t and have never been but they say, they are sure, you are.

I have had my voice stuffed down my throat, like a magician’s scarf never seen until called for, and I have reached down with my trembling fingers and tugged it out, one delicately colored inch at a time.

It may be too angry, too messy, too brown, brown, brown. But it is my voice, and I will cradle it in my hands and will the fabric to form warm, vibrating feathers and flesh and hold it up toward the sky so that the air can course over its back and remind it of what it is and what it is meant for.

It is my voice, and it is there to speak for me, to sing for me, to soar and wheel about for me. I need no poorly intended impostors. I do not need to unhappily, forcibly offer thanks for flimsy, borrowed wings.

This is my voice, and I will wield it. Because no one knows its worth, where it has sprung from and what tongue it will speak in, more firmly, more deeply, more richly than I do.