On Being My Own Kind of Woman

It is fascinating,

The vast complexities and simplicities,

The contradictions and the affirmations,

That come along with being a woman.

My Body

Is strong—

the product of a lifetime of discipline and dedication

Yet malleable, flexible—

An embodiment of the inherent elegance of womankind

Owned and passed down by generations of beauty before me.

My Feet

Are rooted deep within the soil I stand on

Firmly coiled around reality...

Grasping tightly around the ground I bloomed from.

But

My Head

Is a helium balloon from a diluted memory at a childhood fair

On a worn and tattered string.

Aimlessly navigating a blue daydream sky,

Carelessly ricocheting between clouds of

What is, what should be, what could be.

My Tongue

Speaks lively words of “wisdom”

From a life only a fraction lived

But from emotions fully felt,

Before

My Teeth

Clench down on it

Bearing bone-strong wisdom

Of lives lived before mine-—lived more completely than mine

Passed down to me by tongues of the same flesh and blood.

My Voice

Runs, and runs, and runs,

Like a seemingly endless highway at 3 AM

It is soft and smooth,

Paved with compassion, and kindness, and empathy, and understanding

But do not be mistaken

For it is still paved with gravel.

It is not quiet. It will not whisper.

It will speak potent, daggering words

Against wrongness and in favor of rightness

As according to

My Mind

Undoubtedly the most mysterious, and exciting, and vast part of

My being

It is an ocean, deeper than the depths of ours here on Earth,

With waves that crash higher than the highest mountaintops.

It is a galaxy,

Teeming with stars so iridescent

They’ll blind you if you stare too long.

It is a tree,

Before we breathe the air it gives

Before we scribble our thoughts on the paper it produces

Before we rest our tired bodies on the bedframes built from its wood.

A forest of untapped potential,

Yearning to let its sweet sap spill from its trunk.