What is a Woman?

What does it feel like?

Is she womb-expanding, love-enhancing porn to help you deal with life?

Like creating a body,

a brain,

a soul—

is just a side effect,

a highlight

of being human, right?

A mother.

A wife.

She soothes your soul and keeps your secrets out of sight.

It’s her job, her duty, her pleasure—

to pull you from the depths, right?

While your ambition sparks her ammunition,

she brings light into your darkest renditions.

But pardon my oversight—

I’m too busy transcending black and white,

falling into gray matter to feed my appetite.

So I write with a whimper and go out with a bang,

strumming my fingers, feeling your pain,

freeing your mind so you can stay sane,

making sure you remember your rights.

I know. You’re right.

So I write —

not fight,

flight,

or freeze.

I release the unseen,

confess the lessons,

until you see me—

me—

in the monotony of existence.

And delighting in intoxicated talk is exhausting,

like having one key and forty locks,

or counting clocks

instead of minutes that pass.

They say, “Know yourself, girl.”

“Be true to yourself, girl.”

Then call me witch

for dodging the tricks of the world,

for escaping hungry foxes

that feast on the softest.

Like a false prophet, I’m full of paradoxes—

how being free isn’t really free,

and looking back,

it was all a dream.

Digging deep in drowning waters,

scaling walls of shattered matter—

on the cusp of remembrance I wonder:

Is this ecstasy or eternity?

I craft irony from heresy,

a felony to the enemy

of my mind’s ability

to protect me from the unseen.

I decorate time like melody.

Anyway—

it was just a lesson,

not a life sentence.

A self crystallized in transcendence.

To be or not to be—

the question.

To live thrice and die once—

the essence.

But where do I look to really see?

And where are you—

in me?