ManicDDaily

Bell

I am nothing, I am taught–vagina a brand
of absence.  Not true–
I am something, I am taught,
in the way that the chair you sit upon is something, or the cot
where you throw yourself down, or that fine pinky ring that one day
you will pawn–but when I am taught
something else–even just the writing of these words,
the chair will stand, the cot straighten, and print everywhere
will ring out to me, inked clappers pealing
this whole damned, whole blesséd, world.

*********************

This – yes, I’m calling it a draft, as it is early in the morning here-was written for Kerry O’Connor’s prompt on Real Toads on micro-poetry.  I am afraid it is micro-prose if micro-anything. Kerry asked us to think of seeing the world through a grain of sand–here I was thinking of something that sounds perhaps small–girls’ education–but is huge.  And really, it could be the education of any child, boy or girl–

The pic is an old one taken by me many years ago in Nepal (early 80’s)–I happen to have that pic, I don’t think that girls’ education is particularly worse in Nepal than in many many other parts of the world. 

PS – of course, I am not referring to my personal experience here–lucky enough to grow up in a place and time where although women were under certain obstacles, they were allowed to thrive.