I never grow tired of being free

A poem

Every woman was born and was fed the story:

“I want to be beautiful.”

“I want to be so beautiful.”

It’s a chase from the beginning —

running toward becoming

a blur of a woman

forgetting herself

getting further from

the origin of the self.

And that is the source of my work:

measuring, documenting, collecting

evidence that we finally

return to ourselves

in the time and space it takes

to learn to drop our shoulders.

I think of all the time

I wasted not feeling

perfect and good

enough as I am.

We watch old movies

and I say, “It must’ve been

so hard for woman back then —

but we always romanticize the time.”

“Oh definitely,” my mother says,

“I was the first generation of woman

who could actually have a life.

I had a job and a great deal

of independence —

I got married late: 29.”

I lounge on

the velvet green couch:

at 35, I have

a spacious life.

Oh how

I will never grow tired

of being free.