To Be Woman

To be a Woman Is to be pain, anguish, and confusion To want to drift the streets of night without dripping dread, fearing her own blood spilling on pavements, her own helplessness To be a Woman Is to hide her face behind a cultural value, whether by the bruising blooms of makeup, or the dim mask of irrational perfection To long for respect, to kill destitution with a sharp bladed knife, and feel that she is just as strong, just as valuable as a man. To be smart and beautiful and graceful enough to hurt him as he has hurt her, to have that power of sheer force and bulk and muscle Yet the wing beats of a swan And to live without the weight of history, and the many chains it drags behind her. The many expectations that have piled throughout countless ages on her back, saying that she is not fit for war but for dependence and bondage. That she is but a house of plunder Though she fights a war that none yet see, though she is an Amazon of the shadows among the cutlery of the kitchen To be a woman is to hope that the age of innocence never dies That she shall someday be loved, not despised That no strong hand shall mar her face or shatter her visage of security To know that she need not breathe in corsets of tightly wound fashion And that behind frail bones and bird skin she is strong and smiles with the power to light the heavens like a star. To be a woman is to struggle every day for the worth of living, for the worth of being and the privilege one day of dropping all discord, all pretention and breathing the free air, and loving finally, at last, the free limbs and breasts and dreams That say she is as good as any man.