You want her fawn-like
A glass jaw with four branches leading to fingers as frail as leaves
One finger on reserve for you, she’s a blank slate waiting to be worthy of your color
In her left hand she cradles your ego, and nothing brings you more amusement than watching her arm shake from the impossible weight
You want her exotic but tame, bland enough to please your mother but not so stale you get bored of her
You fall for her full moon hips but when she opens her mouth and stars fall out, it’s all too loud and astounding for you
But that day will arrive like sun flooding into a kitchen
The day she realizes loving you is being an open door, always watching you leave, but loving herself is being the entire house
It’s being her own home
In both hands she carries wildflowers and chapbooks
One night, while driving back from a party, you called her cigarette fiction
but she is an anthology
made up of cosmos and slow-brew Sundays, steeped in incense and cinnamon
One finger raised to you, she stands solid gold
Arms soft, belly full
Armored with laughter and pleasure she never feigns for a man
She loves from her fullness, not from her inadequacy
She is still becoming
She is an untold story, not the amalgamation of every headline listing a missing or battered woman
but a mantra that shouts,
bless the women who overcome
bless the women who find home within themselves
bless the women who don’t skip meals and have stopped letting their body be a number
bless the women who open the windows and buy their own flowers
the women who don’t hold their breath
the women who are learning the word “freedom” and reserving the word “sorry” for when it is actually needed.
bless the women who are choosing to bloom outside of the boxes they were buried in
-inspired by Tonya Ingram
