Hands That Shouldn’t Touch

Your hands,

rough with centuries of stolen power,

grasp at the roots of lives you will never understand.

You claim dominion over bodies,

over love, over land,

over freedoms that were never yours to give or take.

You reach for her body—

not in reverence, not in awe,

but in conquest,

as if her womb were your field

to plow, to seed, to command.

But your touch is unworthy;

it burns with the shame of your entitlement,

your hunger for control masquerading as law.

And to us,

the queer and the Black,

the Brown and the Other,

your hands come like shadows—

stripping away our joy,

our truths,

our futures.

You legislate our identities

with pens dipped in fear,

scripting a world

where love is a threat

and color is a crime.

You hold your power like a fist,

tight and trembling,

afraid of what you cannot crush.

But we see you.

We know your fragility,

your fear of a world where you are not king,

your terror at the thought

that our voices will rise

louder than your lies.

You fear us because we are unyielding—

because we bloom where you plant decay,

because we find freedom in the very spaces

you try to erase.

Your hands,

so unworthy,

should never touch what they seek to destroy.

Not her body,

not our love,

not the lives you belittle with gerrymandered maps

and crooked gospels.

We will reclaim what you’ve stolen,

with our voices, our art, our rage.

And when we rise,

it will not be to ask for your permission—

it will be to take back what you thought was yours.

Our bodies.

Our identities.

Our freedom.

Hands off,

because none of it ever belonged to you.