Make me more woman, give me
lipstick on my teeth and press rouge into my cheeks.
Teach me how to curl my hair with rags and bobby pins,
tell me that my hair is my “feature”, meaning
girls like me don’t have a lot going for them.
Spit on me, make me into a pillar of salt because I turn around
when men scream at me on my way home from work.
Make me strong woman: make me spew fire when he calls me a *****, when he
messes up my curls, ******, when
I cannot bear to wake up in my body anymore. Make
my stretch marks unfurl like orchids, please make me love
tending to this garden body.
Make me believe somebody else loves tending to this.
Make me woman, give me the sacred feminity that
only my mother understands, when I
watched her do her makeup as a child.
Make me love my cupboard-mouth crammed full of broken ceramic.
Make the stained-glass faces of magazine covers something I could
perhaps assimilate to.
But I find it important to note that
my hands have held the wrinkled Haitian ones that told me I was an angel,
the tear-tracked ones with chipped nail polish and a stillborn baby,
the frantic ones that were riddled with panic.
And in those moments, I felt woman, but somehow I am not yet
woman enough, not strong enough, not
enough.