you do not own me

a revised version of the poem. Hope you'll like.

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You do not own me.

I should have said that way before.

I should’ve said that at your first utterance

of a promise.  A promise I should not have called

a promise—the ledgers attest to a payment

of kisses, kisses and tears.

I do not owe you anything.

I should have said that before you forced me

to capitulate, before you took me in your arms

and mapped the terrain of my body with your hands,

before you claimed my nights, my days, my secrets—

my life. The tragedy of this age—people go about

thinking they can buy, that they can own

anything.

The principle they call equivalent exchange

                but is never really equivalent

because you took more from me

                than I took from you

when we kissed.

Why is it that

we have gone from being people

to being only things 

of relative worth?

We think:

A heart is nothing

but a beating apparatus

inside our chests, indicating life or death.

Our hands are nothing

but mere accessories to the machines

we have turned into as we work

day in, day out.

Our lips

are but the doors of breath

with which we seal

a dateless bargain to engrossing death.*

Why is it a bargain?

Why can’t it be love that gives and takes

with no regard to giving and taking

and owning,

why must you call me,

my dear, my love,

my own?

*lines lifted from William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet