A Real Woman

How beautiful I feel!!
Now, here, in my
ratty shirt & no bra,
my hair sticking up in wild, nap-induced tufts,
no make-up, no earrings, not even my signature ring!
Legs clad in jeans with
blown-out knees & a hole in the butt,
pulled over unshaved legs,
toes tucked into baby blue sequined slippers,
paint-splattered hands and arms, an
errant splotch on my cheek, and (of course)
Zoe in my lap.

Around me, evidence of my afternoon,
home tending to a sick &
mostly-sleeping Double BB.

Art, it's art, piles and stacks,
pages and paint brushes and tubes
and ink bottles and rinse buckets
and soiled blotter paper and
gloppy paper towels.
Scissors, stapler, glue stick,
ruler, punches, trimmer -
the creativity maze.
My Zoe carefully tiptoes
through it all on her way to my lap,
fastidiously shaking off the sticky goo
such as she always does.

Here I am!
Do you see?
Oh, DO YOU SEE?

Color, glitter, ribbon, photos, paper.
My inside skin turned inside-out,
overtaking the room with inspiration,
drenching me in a halo of myself
& banishing all notions of how I
'should' look, or feel, or BE.

HOW BEAUTIFUL I AM!
Look!
My ideas, my innovation, my
responses, summoned, expressed,
caught now with
glue & ink & shapes &
focal images & words.
My heart, my soul, my love, my
fears, my memories, my LIFE,
here, all around me, an
unimaginably genuine self-portrait.

Part, stereotypes!
Make way, expectations!
Take note, perpetrators of false feminine realities!

THERE IS A REAL WOMAN AMONG YOU,

and I am she.

02/24/09 l. antonia brown
isle of sky words