I dream of circles

a poem by me for International Womens Day

No one told me I may not be able to be a Mother
Just like no one told my friend she didn’t have to be one.

Sex wasn’t a word in my parents’ dictionary.
In school babies appeared if a boy looked at you a certain way
Until Meghan taught me what really happens in 10th grade.
The boys at school poked fun at my thin body
They only looked at girls who grew breasts
That’s how Meghan knew everything.
If only Women knew what they are asking when they wish themselves skinny.

Meghan didn’t tell me about miscarriage
No one did
Until one day in August
Then everyone told me their secret.

Secrets unspoken for shame.
Shame endured for generations of secrets.

I do not blame my mother.
She was as she was raised
Her own mother’s unspoken heartbreaks stacked as high as the neat piles of wood my grandfather left her.
That’s all she had to keep warm after he died
No memory of his touch or whispers of love
They too were never spoken.
Instead his voice is inside her head
Shoulds and should nots so she knows how to keep going.

When will we toss aside the maps given to us by men
Maps and bibles that paint lines our Grandmothers dared not cross?
Why do we believe a man came to save us when the blood of life is Woman’s?

I dream of circles of Women who bury the lines with our feet dancing under the moon.
I dream of circles of Women who cannot keep secrets
Who narrate the heartbreaks that await us from pulpits of stars
And hold each other as we birth our grief.

What could it be for daughters to hear aloud stories of magic and misery of being Woman
So when their own mysteries unfold
Their bodies remember the story as they cry
Held together by a circle of stars instead of bleeding alone in shame?