You Are More Than A Woman

Sweet girl, you are more than a woman.
You are legs, voices, attitudes of those who came before you
and of the babies you will one day bear.
You are grandmother’s smile and aunty’s homemade dumpling soup.
You are the pearls in the jewelry box and the gym shoes by the door.
You are a mind that stubborn and a laugh that’s contagious,
your mother’s calloused hands and the shyness of your sister.
You are the complexions and statures the smooth
the round the skinny the lanky. You are
every color, a piece of each woman you’ve ever known
or spoken to or been inspired by or loved. You carry
each of them with you. You are them all. You are the voice
that speaks, the ear that listens. Men will call and cat-call
and whistle and wait. You can open your mind or your legs
and especially our own doors. If you want to. You are hands
that file papers, that drive cars, that deliver babies,
that put food on the table. You are strong and big
and too strong and too much and sexy and beautiful
and gentle and wild. You are like flowers, like fruit,
like drugs, like dreams. Seductive. Terrifying.
You are lines of poetry, words not yet spoken, histories
and stories and recipes written on crinkled paper.
You are breasts, eyes, fingers, toes, mouths.
You are more than just a woman. You are a world.