I am female. But I am trying hard to become Woman.
Why? Because I want a destiny for us when we stand as Man and Woman not just
male and female.
There are male and female everything, including plugs and sockets, but there is
only one species that can be called Man and Woman.
Will you help me? Will you help us?
First I must speak, not in banners or slogans, but in words that convey my heart's feelings.
I must do more. I must reach the heart of you, beyond your intellect if you are to understand the Woman of me struggling to be.
Centuries of dependency and lower status created deep resentment and fear. So
deep that early in life I learned the one weapon nature gives me. To be the sheath
for your sword.
But there is so much more to me and to you if you will help me realize the Woman I am within.
Why do you desire the innocence of me yet seek to destroy it in a hundred ways?
You despoil the bud before it can bloom. The rich fruit I could bring to you if you gave it a chance to ripen.
You penetrate my inmost privacy in ignorance of who and what I am and then
wonder where the tender girl has gone.
Shall I tell you?
I am lost to impatient desire; to callous exposure in childbirth and penetration of alien hands.
I am lost to the mother of me if you do not share the care of that which we bring forth together.
I am lost to confining roles you impose while you live experiences I cannot share.
I am lost to the economic system you devised that frustrates and binds us both; to the tension and fear that lack creates.
I am lost when I must enter this mainstream and be carried away, spreading myself too thin.
I am lost if you remain fixed in man's work-woman's work symbols that apply to
the past.
Now I must span both areas, with or without your help, because the economy of your devising is a dragon
That feeds on our time and energy, destroying time for renewal.
I am lost to a Frankenstein creation of endless things.
To technology that put a man on the moon but has not erased hunger.
To endless fascination with gadgets that make slaves of us but have not ended prisons of fear and hate.
To a moon shot that lifted our eyes but not to heaven, Only to one small, insignificant shining orb in the vault of the Eternal.
To divine intelligence that shone forth in rare and woundrous glory then
surrendered to proud intellect whose creations also destroy.
After long centuries I am being liberated.
To what? To experience the agony of soul that rides today's treadmill?
To surrender to the fleeting sensation a swinging gut and open receptacle can provide?
To use the creative power of words in as destructive and coarse a way as I choose?
To experience the dubious joy of competition that is predicated upon a winner and a loser?
To entrust the nurture and guidance of our young to careless, indifferent, often
ignorant hands?
Our world slides toward an abyss while we worship athletic prowess but deny honor to excellence we should demand of those who mold tomorrow's future.
To nurture, to sustain, to enrich. These I once understood. But my physical
measurements ursurped their place.
To a female all cats are gray at night. To a Woman there is no casual affair.
Biologically we risk too much. Faced with the same risks wouId your body be as eager?
And yet, and yet, what woundrous hand fashioned me to love you still. To long to be with you, stand beside you, nurture and sustain you. I can give you so much if you let me.
If you do not destroy the Woman of me before I can find her, leaving only a female responding to jungle rhythms.
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Copyright (c) 2006 A La' Lansun
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