I Watched, I Noticed, I Refused. Poetry Analysis (Unsanctioned)

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Please take a moment to pause. Maybe grab a drink before continuing. This one carries weight.

I’m writing this on a quiet night, when everything feels a little too close to the surface. Not confusion, not sadness, but something sharper. The kind of feeling that settles in the body before it ever reaches language.

There are experiences that do not arrive loudly. They come disguised as conversation, attention, and so-called good intentions. At first, you do not name them. You only notice your shoulders tightening, your breath changing, your sense of space slowly shrinking.

This poem exists because I felt disgust. Not sudden or dramatic, but steady and unmistakable. The kind that appears when a boundary is crossed and someone insists on calling it something else.

I did not write this to explain myself. I wrote it because some moments do not ask to be softened or forgiven. They ask to be documented.

So here it is.

A poem born from discomfort, refusal, and a boundary that remains intact.

Unsactioned

by Uni Sonia Yulianti

Do not dress hunger as destiny.
I smelled entitlement before you spoke.
Respect never needs rehearsal here.
Disgust learns posture, then performs.

You mistook my stillness for access.
Leaned closer than consent allowed.
Called pressure interest, insistence affection.
My body answered before my mouth.

Your gestures traveled where respect refuses.
Words lingered like unwashed hands.
You smiled, mistaking recoil for shyness.
As if disgust were invitation.

You offered ring like ownership papers.
An empty future, loudly advertised.
No labor, no listening, no ground.
Only appetite wearing borrowed certainty.

When refused, you inflated yourself.
Noise replaced remorse, display replaced dignity.
You needed witnesses, not connection.
My boundary punctured your performance.

This ends without apology or debate.
I do not cleanse your behavior.
My no stands complete, unseduced.
Disgust belongs where you left it.

POEM ANALYSYS

Do not dress hunger as destiny.

I smelled entitlement before you spoke.

Respect never needs rehearsal here.

Disgust learns posture, then performs.

When I wrote this opening, I was trying to strip the situation of its disguises. I was tired of how certain behaviors are softened by language, how hunger is often renamed fate, persistence renamed courage. I knew something was wrong before anything was said out loud. It was intuitive, almost physical. That is why I chose the word “smelled.” Entitlement has a presence. It announces itself even before it speaks. I wanted to make it clear that respect is not something you practice when it benefits you. It does not need rehearsal. Disgust, on the other hand, feels learned. It adjusts itself. It knows how to stand, how to perform. This stanza sets the tone. What follows is not misunderstanding. It is pattern.

You mistook my stillness for access.

Leaned closer than consent allowed.
Called pressure interest, insistence affection.
My body answered before my mouth.

This stanza comes from frustration. From the realization that silence is often treated as permission, especially when it belongs to a woman. I was not inviting anything. I was simply quiet. Yet that quietness was translated into availability. The language here matters to me. Pressure becomes interest. Insistence becomes affection. These substitutions are not innocent. They are deliberate. I ended the stanza with the body answering first because that is how it happened. My discomfort existed before I could articulate it. My body reacted faster than my words, which is something I trust now more than explanation.

Your gestures traveled where respect refuses.
Words lingered like unwashed hands.
You smiled, mistaking recoil for shyness.
As if disgust were invitation.

This is where the poem becomes physical. I wanted the reader to feel contamination, not just discomfort. Gestures “traveling” suggests movement beyond permission, beyond what was offered. The image of unwashed hands is intentional. It implies residue. Something that stays even after the moment ends. The smile is important. It represents willful misinterpretation. Choosing to see recoil as shyness is not confusion. It is denial. Disgust, once again, is misread as something soft. This stanza captures how violation often survives by pretending it is desired.

You offered ring like ownership papers.
An empty future, loudly advertised.
No labor, no listening, no ground.
Only appetite wearing borrowed certainty.

This stanza is about entitlement reaching its peak. Ring is introduced not as commitment, but as claim. Something used to legitimize access. The future offered here is hollow, loud, and unearned. That is why I repeat absence. No labor. No listening. No ground. The final line matters deeply to me. Certainty is borrowed. It is not built. It is worn. Appetite dresses itself as confidence, hoping no one notices the lack beneath it. This stanza exposes the imbalance between what is demanded and what is actually offered.

When refused, you inflated yourself.
Noise replaced remorse, display replaced dignity.
You needed witnesses, not connection.
My boundary punctured your performance.

Refusal changes everything. Here, it does not lead to reflection, but expansion. Louder behavior. Bigger gestures. A need to be seen. This stanza is about performance, not emotion. Dignity disappears, replaced by spectacle. I wanted my boundary to do something active here. It does not gently close the door. It punctures. It collapses the illusion. The performance cannot survive once the boundary is acknowledged. This is the moment where power returns to me.

This ends without apology or debate.
I do not cleanse your behavior.
My no stands complete, unseduced.
Disgust belongs where you left it.

I ended the poem without softness on purpose. There is no apology because none is owed. There is no debate because refusal is not a discussion. I refuse to cleanse or soften what happened for the comfort of anyone else. The final line is an act of return. Disgust does not stay with me. It is not mine to carry. It goes back to its source. The poem closes by restoring order, by placing responsibility where it always belonged.

Source by Pinterest

Sometimes the most confusing moments aren’t the loud ones. They are the quiet crossings. The pauses that stretch too long. The shifts you feel in your body before your mind catches up.

Writing this poem was not about anger alone. It was about clarity. About naming patterns without excusing them. About allowing myself to feel disgust without translating it into politeness, patience, or silence. Some experiences do not ask for empathy. They ask for boundaries to be written down and remembered.

I do not claim to have every answer. Maybe the poem understands more than I do. Maybe it does not. What I know is that this was my way of tracing something real and necessary without softening its edges.

Unsanctioned exists as a record.
A refusal preserved in language.
A reminder that no does not require decoration.

Thank you for reading this piece of my wandering but deliberate thoughts.
Here’s to the questions we stop pretending not to ask and the boundaries we finally stop explaining.

See you on the next page. 🌙✨