Once My Silence Held You Spellbound Poem by Meena Kandasamy

You wouldn't discuss me because my suffering
was not theoretical enough. Enough. Enough.
Enough. Now I am theoretical enough.
I am theatrical enough.

I have learnt all these big big words.
I can use them with abandon.
I can misuse them. I can refuse them.
I can throw them about and one day,
I can throw them out.
I am the renegade who can drop
these multi-syllable monsters
for studied, stylistic effect.
I am the rebel who can drop them altogether.
I invent new ones every passing day.
FYI, OED consults me. Roget's Thesaurus
finds it tough to stay updated.

But because I use these bedeviled words
the way you use me never means
that I have stopped seething in anger
that I have stopped swearing.