There are Many Ways to Be a Woman
A poem
Might I be celebrated for believing there are many ways to be a woman?
I might long for the sweeping of a hero’s arms as the morning light bathes us
like we will be forever young lovers. Why I want that is beyond me
because your leg muscles atrophy when you are carried all the time.
All the time I think about when I climbed the giant sawdust pile
in the back woods of Goffstown, New Hampshire and my dad and uncle jabbered on and on
about tractor engines and property right. You’ll never make it to the top. And still I climbed.
I climbed so high that my feet slid from gravity and the unstable existence
of wood remnants that are no longer trees, not made into boards just sand
like dust — sawdust ashes. I feared climbing to impossible heights because boredom
always makes me do stupid things. In college waiting in my almost-boyfriend’s dorm room for him and everyone else to stop talking, jabbering again, about radio shows
and set lists, I took a Jolly Rancher candy and lit it on fire. A drop of candy plummeted onto my skin just where my thumb attaches to my hand. I didn’t scream. Someone else did.
