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Tell your daughters of this year,
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how we woke needing coffee
-
but discovered instead cadavers
strewn about our morning papers,
-
waterlogged facsimiles
of our sisters, spouses, small children.
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Say to your baby of this year
when she asks, as she certainly should,
-
tell her it was too late coming.
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Admit even in the year we leased freedom,
we didn't own it outright.
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There were still laws
for every way we used our privates
-
while they pawed at the soft folds of us,
-
grabbed with no concern for consent,
-
no laws made for the men
that enforced them.
-
We were trained to dodge,
-
to wait, to cower, and cover,
-
to wait more, still, wait.
-
We were told to be silent.
-
But speak to your girls of this wartime,
-
a year preceded by a score of the same,
-
so as in two decades before,
-
we wiped our eyes,
-
laced caskets with flags,
-
evacuated the crime scene of the club,
-
caterwauled in the street,
-
laid our bodies on the concrete
against the outlines of our fallen,
-
cried, "Of course we mattered,"
-
chanted for our disappeared.
-
The women wept this year.
-
They did.
-
In the same year, we were ready.
-
The year we lost our inhibition
and moved with courageous abandon
-
was also the year we stared down barrels,
-
sang of cranes in skies,
ducked and parried,
-
caught gold in hijab,
collected death threats,
-
knew ourselves as patriots,
-
said, "We're 35 now, time we settled down
and found a running mate,"
-
made road maps for infant joy,
shamed nothing but fear,
-
called ourselves fat and meant, of course,
-
impeccable.
-
This year, we were women,
-
not brides or trinkets,
-
not an off-brand gender,
-
not a concession, but women.
-
Instruct your babies.
-
Remind them that the year has passed
to be docile or small.
-
Some of us said for the first time
that we were women,
-
took this oath of solidarity seriously.
-
Some of us bore children
and some of us did not,
-
and none of us questioned
whether that made us real
-
or appropriate or true.
-
When she asks you of this year,
-
your daughter, whether your offspring
or heir to your triumph,
-
from her comforted side of history
teetering towards woman,
-
she will wonder and ask voraciously,
-
though she cannot fathom your sacrifice,
-
she will hold your estimation of it holy,
-
curiously probing, "Where were you?
-
Did you fight?
Were you fearful or fearsome?
-
What colored the walls of your regret?
-
What did you do for women
in the year it was time?
-
This path you made for me
which bones had to break?
-
Did you do enough, and are you OK, momma?
-
And are you a hero?
-
She will ask the difficult questions.
-
She will not care
about the arc of your brow,
-
the weight of your clutch.
-
She will not ask of your mentions.
-
Your daughter, for whom you have
already carried so much, wants to know
-
what you brought, what gift,
what light did you keep from extinction?
-
When they came for victims in the night,
-
did you sleep through it
or were you roused?
-
What was the cost of staying woke?
-
What in the year we said time's up,
what did you do with your privilege?
-
Did you suck on others' squalor?
-
Did you look away
or directly into the flame?
-
Did you know your skill
or treat it like a liability?
-
Were you fooled by the epithets
of "nasty" or "less than"?
-
Did you teach with an open heart
or a clenched fist?
-
Where were you?
-
Tell her the truth. Make it your life.
-
Confirm it. Say, "Daughter, I stood there
-
with the moment
drawn on my face like a dagger,
-
and flung it back at itself,
-
slicing space for you."
-
Tell her the truth, how you lived
in spite of crooked odds.
-
Tell her you were brave,
-
and always, always
in the company of courage,
-
mostly the days
when you just had yourself.
-
Tell her she was born as you were,
-
as your mothers before,
and the sisters beside them,
-
in the age of legends, like always.
-
Tell her she was born just in time,
-
just in time
-
to lead.
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(Applause)