by Zuzanna Pawlowska

I know I promised you I won’t cry again
That I will be strong
That I will fight
That I will embrace the pain
But then you had to die again
You had to have your rights taken away again
They called you a human incubator again
Reduced your life to producing children
Took away your humanity,
They tried to make you invisible again
And then you fled again, escaping pain, seeking a better future trying to save their lives And you got trapped again
And then you couldn’t, anymore, feel this way again
And so, you set yourself on fire
But it did not work… again
And you have been attacked, you have been mocked, your freedom was restrained As they don’t understand who you are, they are scared of your power, But you shall rise again
You tell me not to cry again
But don’t you dare tell me to have to be strong for us all, to never show weakness again For I have tried, for we have tried … time and time again
And the struggle is not only mine, or yours but it flows within us,
with the generational trauma and pain
After all the erasure, and the years of fighting
Oh, I really don’t know if I can do this again!
But I promised that I won’t cry again
That I will pick myself up, I will go to the streets, I will write, I will dare to fight, and that I shall not ‘stay in my lane’
I will turn my cry into a scream, and they will hear me and they will fear me
and experience the anger I will no longer contain
For I have screamed again, and I will scream again Please don’t blame me if I cry again
In this cycle, we call life
We shall be free again

Zuza Pawlowska is an intersectional feminist and a Gender Studies and Law student at SOAS University of London. She is writing her thesis on the creation of a sexist and homophobic society in Poland and its subsequent dehumanization of Polish women. She is invested in anti-racism work, the fight for abortion rights for all people with uteruses, refugees’ rights, and the Palestinian right to return among other plights aimed at achieving equity.