Sweet Potato Haircut

What do I see?
I see women, women, everywhere.
Women taking up their space, crowding in the gallery
and gracing the wall plaques with their warm and strong names.
I see women standing at the podiums,
filling the presentations,
I hear women staking their claim in this conversation.

I hear women daring to
make the meaningful inquiries,
to ask the thought provoking questions. Women unfurling
the miles and textbook pages of time and lies
which held them in the periphery of the record, in the blurry shadows
of a society built on their aching and strengthening backs.
I watch women deftly navigating the disharmonies
of our poisoned people, repairing and rebuilding.
I see women speaking up into the silences
of lecture halls and classrooms, women washed clean with rain
falling through shattered ceilings where glass used to be.
Women weathering the tensions and questions of worthiness,
sitting with uncertainty and insecurity and
the quietly violent voices of a society
that uses degradation as a marketing strategy.
I see women surging with expertise and hard earned accolades,
women initiating spiritual awakening and healing
and necessary conversations with poise and grace and capability.
I see beautiful women, they’re all such beautiful women.
Women holding the microphone, women keeping time
yielding the most powerful pens and electric guitars
with calloused hands and red nail polish. Women baring bold vulnerability and authenticity
where there was none before,
women being honest.
Women tilling the fields and nurturing the crops,
womanning the tractor and scrubbing weeds in the hot sun with the hoe.
Women brightening and strengthening and guiding the world to be a safer space for all.

What would the world do without you, wonderful and wild women?