Joy
Joy. The Poem
We Win When We Work
I washed my face,
pulled back my hair,
stepped into the room,
ready to move,
to play,
to find the grotesque in the beautiful,
the beauty in the grotesque.
He sat across from me,
a latecomer,
a stranger,
but somehow,
he decided—
I will talk to her about her appearance.
“Whoa, you look really different today.”
Yesterday, I stood,
I spoke of monuments.
Today, I sat,
I prepared to create.
But all he saw was my hair,
my bare face,
the absence of decoration.
“The hair pulled back—no makeup.”
He couldn’t stop himself.
Entitlement is a runaway train.
Beside me, another voice—
“I had someone comment on my hair once…”
and I knew,
we knew,
this moment,
this silencing.
Because the upbringing of polite
crashes against
“Why are you being so fucking rude to me?”
And our words collapse in the wreckage.
I don’t know who put micro
in front of aggression.
Probably a bloke.
There’s nothing micro about being made
to feel small.
And yet,
I said nothing.
I worked.
I moved.
I let my body speak
where words were choked back.
And as I worked,
he faded.
He disappeared into his own irrelevance.
We win when we work.
We win when we disregard.
We win when we create,
when we move forward,
when we take up space
without permission.
The above works were created in March 2025