She talks in truthful tones
and walks the talk with steps so certain
they turn a mystifying maze into
a map-like meditation leading
toward the center of a labyrinth.

She moves with lawful command
from laundry to laboratory, labor to love shack
bartering with beautiful brain, brainy beauty
through boardroom deals or backroom brawls.

She gives life and bears witness
to the miracle of motherhood,
touching with tenderness
that nurtures a newborn.

She aches with half her heart; keeping
the other half strong enough to withstand
quakes and flooding and bullets and beatings.

She loves fully with heart and soul
and skin and bones and sticks and stones
through moans and groans
in combat, comfort and discomfort zones.

She is wife, mother, daughter, sister, friend
flawed and fierce, grace and groove
beauty with a speck of beast
soft yet tough; best not to be messed with.

She is human, wrapping her all-weather arms
around promise-filled humanity
with an embrace only she can muster.

She holds up half the sky
and braces half this brittle world
with feet planted firmly on the ground,
keeping above and below from colliding,
crumbling around and caving within those
of us already leaning on her all the while.

Still, with only a fraction of the whole
the fight for her equal half goes on…

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Is gender equality, here and everywhere else, achievable?

I realize I use the word beauty a few times in a post about women and girls. Rest assured, I find men and boys beautiful, too.

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Congratulations to the awesome folks at One Stop Poetry who host OneShotWednesday for winning a Shorty Award in Art.  Woo hoo!

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Image by corky100