day FOUR HUNDRED and THIRTY FIVE

The Story of a Woman

I wear thin skin.
I cry easily.
I am often discounted.

I don’t run in my very safe neighborhood after dark, alone.
I don’t walk down sketchy streets alone.
I don’t wander into new and novel places alone.

I have been owned.
I have been made to feel small.
I have had my power stolen from me.

I have been catcalled, propositioned, touched inappropriately,
pressured to do what I didn’t want to do,
cornered.

I have known the shame of insignificance.
I have known fear.
I have known the absence of security.

My body belongs to me.
My mind belongs to me.
My power belongs to me.

I am strong.
I am courageous.
I am worthy.

I am as intelligent as any man.
I am as innovative as any man.
I am as persistent as any man.

I am every woman.

-Rachel Toalson



She Said Something

She said something,
she pointed fingers,
she raised the alarm
on a fault line that shifts
beneath the surface of things
but never quite bubbles out
from beneath the cement slab of
fame, fortune, politics.

She said something,
she pointed fingers,
she raised the alarm—
but, in the end,
she was a woman.
Easily dismissed as
hysterical,
melancholic,
female.

- Rachel Toalson