You took my breathe away.

Not because you were stunningly handsome and knew all the right things to say.

Not because you were more charming than any other man could be on their best day.

Not because you were strong and swept me off my feet the second I saw you that day.

Not because you were the perfect companion that would make everything okay.

You took my breathe away because you took the objection off my lips before I could articulate what to say.

You asked for my hand.

Not to make me a blushing bride that's happier than anyone could understand.

Not to hold it close to your heart, let me feel how it skipped and the beats spanned.

Not to intertwine our fingers and walk with me through trees and across every land.

Not to say words to me sealed with touch of skin and a ring, a promise that will withstand.

You asked for my hand to cuff them to each other so I couldn't help my struggling sisters and brothers get to this promised land.

You swept me off my feet.

Not when you picked me up to take me away to a magical place where suffering is obsolete.

Not when you picked me up on our wedding night at the threshold in an old fashioned feat.

Not when you so boldly decided to be kind when facing a puddle on a dirty street.

Not when you offered to carry me after a night of standing in heels or too long in the heat.

You swept me off my feet when I marched in the center of town for myself and others around, and you came in and carried me off to the jails when I refused to retreat.

I am a damsel, and I am distressed.

Not allowed to speak because I wanted the right to speak for myself and to speak up when I saw wrongs other hadn't confessed.

Not able to be free because chains bond the hands I used to lift up and lead the people who I knew shouldn't be oppressed.

Not able to rise up from where I am because walls and fences keep me from where I was meant to be, and people keep turning into papers and statistics that will never be processed.

I am a damsel in distress because I have been downgraded to a carbon mound who is composed of facts and confounds that will determine if I am mentally, ethically sound to you.

I am more than a paper, more than how words and numbers on a printed page sound. I am a damsel who is more than a stereotype you need to look down on to even address.

I am distressed by the way people look to categorize and dehumanize living people who want nothing more than an equal life with safety and no stress.

I am a silenced, chained, caged up, enraged damsel crying out in distress at the ungodly mess that has become my life, my homeland, my people's chance at success.

I am not the only one. I am nowhere near the last one. I am not the one who has been the most abused and downcast. I am not some fight that was abandoned in the past.

I am a damsel who has never stopped fighting because I am fighting for people's equality. I will not stop until we are all seen as one person, not a thing.

I will not cease until this mindless unkindness of classifying and legalizing abuse of another and hate crimes becomes nothing but a memory, fleeting and flying into history to be done with and an obsolete memory.

I am stuck in history because no one realizes they need to change and accept reality before the past of hatred and indifference can truly become our regretful, forgotten mystery.

I am a damsel stuck in the whirlpool of the present and history.