Your arms are wide
Your eyes are narrow
Your door is open
Your heart is closed
This is the welcome
You offer it to me proudly, loudly
I accept, I sign a contract
Unbreakable
I decline, forever cast aside
Ungrateful
What words sit behind your smiling, empty eyes?
The same words lingering on old, discarded sighs
You are the left over. The forgotten. The stalled.
The mother from a generation taught to fear your own power
Told to be a woman
Told to be quiet
Polite
Perfect
Domestic
They forgot to tell you the most important part
That you belong to them
Listen now to my song. It wakes the fear in you I know. The fear of missed and wasted opportunity. The fear of wrong choices, turns, paths left untended.
But I see. I see your longing. Your power. Your potential. And I believe. Even with your narrow, cold eyes. I believe in your power. Your real power. Not the power of the domestic. The polite. The quiet. The perfect. But, the power of a woman. A woman given choice. Opportunity, information. I hear your shackled roar. In the echo of your shouted words thrown in my face with nasty, poisonous force. I hear your longing. The depth of your fear that everything I stand for is on the side you know you belong.
I am the power of possibility
Of fierce and open love
Of honesty, tamed by compassion
Of compassion that has no boundary but fear
Of fear tamed by courage
Of courage given wings
Hear my song
Hear my roar
Hide behind your door
No longer
No more
We fight this out
Here and now
Your welcome has never been welcoming at all
creating art in the desert 