They tell me all my tension is in my neck
I know why, my body knows
Decades of holding fast the words, the screams

I have a necklace for Justice Ginsberg
and the collar she wore when she dissented

And now I wear my own dissent around my throat:
To say the truths that have been caught there,
To speak for me where my words have gotten stuck 
Where I have been silenced
Or talked over

To make sacred my voice, the words and the scream
Pushed down when I was strangled
And even then couldn’t make a scene
My throat sore for ages after

The scream I held inside when I couldn’t escape those boys
On the bus, the driver laughing

The scream I kept to myself when his pleasure 
Was more important than my pain

The scream I didn’t wake the others with
when I woke to find a man on top of me uninvited 

When I was told my thoughts were wrong
My existence was wrong, less than
My body was not my own

I have never screamed, I do not shout
Even my singing is too loud

This dissent, this I do not consent
To the using of my body
To the conquering of my body
To the colonizing of my body, the claiming it
As the property of another, of a man, of the government

The words I could not say when I was good 
The words I would not say when I thought I belonged to another,
To anyone but myself
When I wouldn’t cause a scene, disrupt the peace
When I didn’t know I was allowed to scream 

I dissent, I do not consent 
I am sovereign here