I don’t know how you like your coffee on misty
mornings.
I don’t know which rooftop you kick your favorite
sneakers off to climb, what haunts your thoughts at night
or what makes you want to stand up and fight.
But I do know you—and I know your heart.
You are the woman who zips her own dress up for work
every morning.
The woman laughing under the rain
without anyone to help you jump over puddles.
The
woman who runs up stairs and double checks locks
before ending every day.
The woman curled up under
sheets, in the corner of a bed meant for two.
I know you because we share the same heart.
We all arrived here through different roads, different
highways and different dirt paths.
Some of us are bruised.
Some of us are spotless.
How we got here doesn’t matter
—only how we’re tied together.
We are the women who spend our sweatpants-wearing
Sunday afternoons alone.
The women who treat ourselves
to fancy Valentine’s Day dinners.
The women who buy
ourselves carnations after making mistakes.
We are the women who’ve decided to bravely put love on
the back burner.
We know we’ll one day be mothers of
beautiful children who’ll share the same clusters of curly ***** coils on their heads.
We know there’ll come a time
when we’ll look into someone’s eyes and see a reflection
of our dreams.
We never for a second doubt that we deserve all this or
that it’ll happen.
But we know that now is not that time,
and we accept it with grace and patience.
Couples in black and white romantic movies make us
smile without wincing.
We sing along to cheesy ballads
on radios knowing that one day, one of them will be sung
for us.
We go to sleep every night happy no one’s taken
our minds hostage.
We aren’t waiting.
We aren’t still, or
frozen with hope.
We are in a constant state of motion,
dedicating everyday to ourselves and the goals our souls
ache for.
To the women with warm hearts and cold hands,
I hope
you know how brave you are .
Solitude can get deafening sometimes,
but self-sufficiency is a trait even warriors have trouble
mastering.
You are your own commander, fighting
frostbite, fidgeting in your mittens. Never apologize for the
fires you light.
Carry our flag with you and know you’ll never be alone.
Beside you stands an army of women marching to the
same heartbeat in bedrooms that are oceans and
countries away,
carrying the same promises to
themselves throughout their days.
Who never allow anyone to tell them what they should have, or who they should need.
And never let anyone tell them when love should, or
should not be.*

-Naomi Hon