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Wo-man
I. Birth.
They make her as they do every wo-man
A lock of man’s hair
The dust on his fingertips
Man’s teeth, man’s feet, man’s ears
Mother’s kiss
They shape her as they do every wo-man
Clumping the features into a ball
To knead into a soul
This is her essence, they say
Her essence is everything
And she knows it too
Because I am wo-man, I guide
Because I am wo-man, I heal
Because I am wo-man, I love
Because I am wo-man
When man approaches, she doesn’t falter
She knows who she is
Her soul calls out
To whom its features once belonged
Man and wo-man, Earth and moon
A foreign figure draws near
Same eyes and nose and lips
Yet an empty soul
They face each other
Wo-man to woman
II. Eternal feminine.
“Do you love him?”
“The man loves me.”
“That isn’t an answer.”
“Why is your soul empty?
“I was born so.”
“Then how would you know who you are?”
“I don’t know yet. I will.”
“How do you know what to do?”
“I do what I desire, isn’t that what we all do?”
“We do our duty.”
“And how would you know what your duty is?”
“My soul tells me.”
“Is that not such a constrained life?”
“I know no other life.”
“Do you love him?”
“My man loves me.”
“But do you love him?”
III. Woman.
Wo-man is different now
No longer a rhythm in her gait
Her soul dimmer than a sun in a cloud
She asks me questions
I don’t know the answer to
Wo-man yells at her man
For the first time and he hits her
The next day her skin peels
As if the sun reached its arms out
To strangle her
One day wo-man approaches me with
Bones for a body and says with a smile
“I don’t love him”
I catch her body
As she collapses to the ground
No more bones, her body is
One brain and one heart
They vanish just as the latter stops
No body, no use
Only her soul remains
Black and filled with
No room to grow, her soul
Has never really been alive
I pick it up and smile
Wo-man no longer is
A poem inspired by Simone de Beauvoir's The Ethics of Ambiguity and The Second Sex.