On Being a Woman
From the start… there was something amiss
Fallacious , but I could not place it.
There were those missing links,
mislaid information…
…a dull and aching absence
of some truth I knew.
I felt it in my heart and bones.
I looked at other people’s faces
Could they see it ? Feel it too ?
They seemed content…
as if toast at breakfast was always golden
and always there…melting the marmalade
They were never searching for butt ends
stubbed out in the Palm Pots of Hotel Foyers
but…. how could they not see it too?
That universal they.. there as if made of wax
Immobile… those soft faces absorbing all that bad fiction
as if it was as natural as a black crow in Detroit
eating caviar.
I knew that it was not…
I knew there was nothing in me
that made me in any sense lesser than man
and I had I had known this
since the day I was born.
From the start…I knew there was something amiss.
Kristine Byrne 2013