Shriveled Souls by Devi Nina Bingham

To defy convention

is not a small feat

when everyone expects you to be a certain way.

Maybe your heritage expects you 

to wear certain clothes

and because of your gender,

have certain attitudes.

What if your soul,

the bright, shiny knowledge

hidden within 

knows a secret that wants to get out?

Do you squash the real you

into the wrong clothes

the wrong hairstyle

the wrong expression

to make someone else

more comfortable?

And why are they uncomfortable

with the real you?

They had defined you without asking.

They never asked: do you like yourself,

because they did not care.

They only cared what they thought,

what they could grasp

even if embarrassingly little.

They never inquired; how does it feel to be you? 

For if they had asked, they would have had to listen

to a perspective very different from the one

they had experienced.

Not being large enough to care,

their souls shriveled up.

Once a soul has shriveled

it usually does not recover.

And shriveled souls are everywhere.

You will know by their callousness and intolerance

to whatever is foreign to their itty, bitty, teeny, tiny

soul. 

And this, their pure bombastic ignorance

is what they are most proud of. 

Do not trouble your head about intolerant people.

They are nothing-they are so nothing.

And nothing will ever rule the world.

Their dated ideas may live as a misfit in time,

but never has a single teeny, tiny soul

wrapped in obscene intolerance survived for long.

It is never as smart as it judges itself to be,

nor does it comprehend that inclusion is a force for good,

and destined to win.