I am here in Suburbia.  It is easy here, watered lawns and life like the weather is mundane...perpetually perfect,  monotonously sunny, and manufactured.  The people too.  They are afraid of rain, of cold and the beauty in discomfort.  They are afraid of pain and so while their facade is approachable they are distant.  

Men fall in love with me for the same reason.   They say, "I have never met a woman like you."  And I know this is true at least for these bearded boys confined to a radius of conformity.  

But women like me, we are everywhere we allow our rebellious selves to flourish in expression.  These are the women who not only raise warriors, but are warriors.  

There is an old city, a city of faith... weathered with the age of monsoons and dry heat.  Her wrinkles in crumbling adobe.  She offers a sunrise and sunset with colors that do not have names but are emotions.  And in the open sky, her thoughts have no hindrance.  The high desert has tested her and her offspring.  And unlike suburbia, water is scares so when it rains...people remember to dance.  

She has a history but does not hide her history because she is authentic.  Without her past, the dirt of the land would never have been fashioned into Great Cathedrals, humble churches and miraculous staircases.  It is her tribulations that ground her, for the winds of March uproot those delicate spirits, consuming them in a cloud of yellow pollen.  

It is her authenticity that saved her.  Liberated her from the fate of materialism, feckless white paint on the perimeter of social confines.  No, the fences she builds are sturdy, deep into the hard caliche.  Mismatched in height and beautiful…beautiful in their practicality…not only keeping cayotes out, but standing tall for what she stands for.  She liberates herself from the fate of the living dead.

She is the real woman who men love.  A woman of grit.  The woman I want to be.