The Women You Know, and the Men You Don’t
The Women You Know
She moves her hips like she only belongs to herself,
and nothing else.
There’s no shine, no smooth silk falling to her shoulders,
just tangles and curls.
She doesn’t hide her crooked smile or yellow teeth,
because they’re hers to show.
On her cheek is a constellation of pink scars where the oils of her youth
freckled her pores with imperfection.
Her body and the curves of it don’t bend the way they “should”;
they dip, they fold, they stretch,
and refuse to smooth their edges.
She sings and her voice is not a bell sound,
it cracks the air open:
a drum beat,
a war cry.
Her hands don’t soften for their pleasure, fingers hard with lines of work.
Why erase the proof of what she’s built?
Her mouth, oh that mouth, speaks the words that no one wants to hear,
but we all need to say.
The strength in her throat and the movement in her toes,
the raw heat of her hope,
and the quiet
of her
defiance.
And the Men you Don’t
The softness of a man is in his hands,
and the way they touch your hair
gently in your sleep.
He doesn’t take the space that isn’t his,
he holds it for you in his arms.
His welcome tears fall freely
from the kind weight of his gaze.
With a willing mind he listens,
and tries
only to speak when he can
make a broken thing whole.
His calluses are worn smooth from a life of holding
a world that rarely holds him back.
He has trembling fingers when the anger makes him cloudy,
but stays his hand in rage
and moves his heart instead.
You’ll feel him in the quiet places,
the eyes that say “I see you”
and the ease he asks for help.
He is cracked, he is stitched, he is trying.
In the trying,
the softness,
and the
strength.