I am woman pt.2

They said womanhood lived in my womb

as if it were a locked room that I lost the key to when cancer came calling.

They measured me in what I could no longer carry,

weighed me against the possibility of motherhood, and said, “less”

But I am not the absence of what was taken.

I am the surge of what remains.

I am still a woman;

not because I bleed, but because I feel.

I am still a woman,

not because I can bear children, but because I have borne pain and lived.

They want softness in lace, but mine is made of scars.

They want silence, but mine is a voice that refuses to stay buried beneath shame.

I am still a woman

when I grieve in public with mascara-stained cheeks and a chest full of broken hope.

I am still a woman when I say no,

when I say nothing,

when I say this body is mine and mine alone.

I am still a woman when I rage,

when I ache,

when I mourn what might’ve been and then still show up in my fullness.

Because womanhood has never lived in a single part of me.

Womanhood lives in all the ways I’ve held myself together when the world tried to pull me apart.

womanhood lives in my laughter,

in my quiet,

in the truths I whisper to the mirror on days when I don’t feel enough.

Womanhood lives in my becoming,

It lives in the fire that tried to take me, in the flame I now carry in my hands.

So don’t tell me what a woman should be.

I’ve lost what you thought defined me

and still, I rise whole.