May we?

Can we choose,

are we allowed

to walk this way,

talk this way,

dress this way –

are we, by necessity,

women

born into bodies

partially prized since birth

for the possibility

of the continuation

of the cyclical rhythm of female time,

the body as vessel that produces

the next generation

of women,

who produce the next

generation of women

who finally dare to ask,

Are we allowed to dress as a man?

Are we allowed to be feminine?

Are we allowed to love other women?

Are we allowed to love many men?

Are we allowed to become men,

(and what does being a man even mean?)

to physically alter the body that promises the future

because we feel our spirits chose

wrong this time around?

May we? Can we? 

Are we women?

(and what does being a woman even mean?)

May we take our bodies out of

the collective investment

in the future, symbolized

by the Child, who in turn

has been stripped of individuality

by those factions who would rather

paint the theory of innocence onto a canvas

as the women grasp the children

produced of their own blood

and desperately query,

“May we?"

I am a walking contradiction,

retracing my steps,

looking backward to find my way forward,

deconstructing the paradigm,

to conversely find my niche within

the cultural construction of Woman

to become the body as vessel,

but I also will never stop

reaching across boundaries

to find the gray area

where we have always dwelt,

the middle ground between being a Woman

and becoming a woman, the in-between space

where individuality begins to surface,

and the, “May I?” becomes

“I can. I will. I am.”