Thursday, January 3, 2019

day SEVEN HUNDRED and FOURTEEN

If the Future is Female Today is the Future


We took to the streets first.
That fact should never be overlooked.
We stood shoulder to shoulder in defiance.
To be disobedient feels so damn good
and it caught like a fire because

then we found our collective voice
and told our story online where they couldn’t ignore it.
Our pain
our humiliation
our rapes
and abuses.

Newspapers said we “toppled” great men
but we did not.
We saw accountability for actions.
We saw justice.
Sometimes.

Still,

some of us didn’t make it,
shot by exes with access
to weapons
gunned down with families
in our living rooms
and churches.

Some of us were mowed down
by white men screaming they will not be replaced.

Some of us were put on display
to bear our pain to a panel of white men
who wanted details but not too much detail.
Who saw a truth laid plain and ignored it
because they did not and would not believe women.

Afterwards,

some of us showed up in community centers
in towns all over the country
empowered for the first time
to run for office.

First we took the streets.
Then we took the booth.

and today,
this little day
passes into history.

Today
over 100 women
will be sworn into the 116th Congress
of the United States of America

Women with voices and ideas
and maybe the power to change
what felt unchangeable.

Women who said No.
Loudly.
Women who were called shrill.
Women who didn’t give up
who wanted better for their families
and themselves.

Women who didn’t wait for power to come to them.
Women who took it instead.

The long arc of history, they say, bends slowly
but today I feel the pull
of all of those women,
dragging history
just a little farther
into
the future.

--Ally Malinenko



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