What I Want My Words to do To You

In my amazing Seminar class, we watched Eve Ensler's documentary "What I Want My Words To Do To You". If you have not seen this film, it is astounding. You should check it out. At the end, all of my students had to write their own version of writing. They wrote beautiful things. This was my version.

What I want My Words to do to You:

I want my words to make you sing.

I want them to pull back the cobwebs of forgotten memory

And allow you to remember what it was like to sing with unabashed volume.

Like a child tripping through quiet, echoing halls.

Like youth, driving open windowed, inhaling summer.

To sing with all the joy we try to bridle with age and responsibility.

To cut the strings that have encircled your chest,

And kept you from breathing.

I want my words to make you shout.

With reactionary protest.

I want my words to make you raise fists

Demanding justice for those who have none.

Who sit in cells of silence, chained to broken promises

To shout with dissenters declare

For those who have no voice to shout with

Because their vocal cords have been cut with

Knives of slavery and marginalization.

I want my words to make you cry

Because you know that you are not alone in pain.

And you can let go of some of it.

Like waves pulling sand back into the ocean.

I want you to feel acceptance

For who you really are

Beneath all the layers you have hidden under

From the cold of judgment and rejection.

I want you to heal.

I want you see outside your own pocket of pain,

And reach into another’s and allow them to empty

Those weights they too have held.

I want my words to make you cry

Out with the joy that only hope brings.

To know that those tears water flowers of spring.

I want my words to make you silent.

To quiet all that has made you sing, shout, and cry

To know that change is possible.

And you don’t know all the answers.

And you can never really be that sure.

I want my words to sit with you

In the quiet unswept corners of your soul,

And reside with you.

Always.