At a young age,
you laboriously worked on complex puzzles;
completing them, with an unnatural ease.
Distinguishing yourself from others.
Your passion direct.
Fixating on numbers,
calculating your future.
You try to find a formula for happiness,
although it is incalculable.
As an irrational number, unable to terminate.
You extract formulas,
despite the odds.
Conveying your theories,
constructing logarithms.
intent to prove it is not abstract,
to be a female actuary.
Seventy years prior,
Catherine Prime opened the field.
Disproving the infeasible claims,
that women could not excel to this level.
Faced with reasons not to give her rank,
amongst the stunned men.
Who claimed she was good,
for a woman.
-Marissa Navedo