"a woman like me"

The same fabric that gives me the gift to produce life

both weaponizes and protects this soul of mine;

the flowers of my womb are really just different chemicals

and a combination of chromosomes

that set my destiny

before I had even left hers-

I love the mystery of the moon

and the protection of the Earth,

but being a she has no real meaning to me

although in some ways it is all that I long to be

for the mask was placed over my face

before my story even began

and they stopped me from understanding myself

and made it so that I would never be enough

of anything-

they made it so that the flowers and the soft pink,

the moon and the Earth

and the love of sapphire stones

would somehow contradict

the struggles, the tears,

the obsession with leaving

but also the love of the world, the observations,

the calculations and the permutations-

the experiments and the genetic mutations;

they made it so that I had to fight through hot tears

while at the same time covering them up

because could a woman ever

be rational and emotional at the same time,

could a woman like me even exist?