>I am not a feminist
>But I do have one that sits under my ear
>And she is one judgemental bitch
>She tells me stories
>About me when I was young and I had a voice and it was loud
>About me when I was a beast who couldn't be tamed
>About me reading poetry in a crowd and
>How I fucked a woman more than once
>
>She remembers when the dr said
>I'll give you these morning after pills, but
>You have to protect yourself because
>Protecting yourself is the only way to ensure your freedom
>and
>self protection is a right that many women fought hard to
>achieve and
>Young woman,
>you can't come back here for these pills again
>It is your RIGHT and your RESPONSIBILITY
>to make sure that your wild nights don't grow into
>wildly needing babies
>and
>he predicted it
>
>one year later my
>wildly growing fetus started
>changing my plans and flipping in belly water
>born to be my redefinition
>stripped me of my labels and named me mother
>taught me how to run on pure necessity even on sleepless
>nights when
>I woke up with nothing left to offer but "mommy"
>mommy needs sleep, mommy needs to eat something, mommy's
>nipples hurt
>taught me how sometimes it's more important to gurgle and
>tickle and just be
>together than to
>just be on time for once
>time has stopped
>and my self is being built quietly in the background while I
>move nimbly among necessities and have to's and
>renegotiations
>my inner poet is lost inside the pockets of my diaper bag, and
>my feminist is
>stuck on top of my shoulder whispering to me that I
>am the mom of girls and I
>need to remember what it is to be a woman
>in order to teach my girls
>how to be the woman that I used to be before
>I lost my feminism and gained my family
>Because I've learned to make peace with a peaceful woman that
>just isn't me
>I've learned to make peace with my necessities and my silence
>and my
>silent necessities But I cannot raise strong women unless I
>can remember how to be one