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Daily Deviation
Daily Deviation
May 21, 2013
~WillowPen contemplates the awkward place between childhood and adulthood and its independence along with the societal qualifiers for being a 'woman' in What Am I?
Featured by Nichrysalis
Literature Text
Lingering in that photo...
In that simple shot
I look, and I see a woman.
I am not a woman.
I have never worked for a lifestyle,
given birth for an allowance
I have never truly loved a man.
I am not a woman.
I do not have the means to
Transport
myself
to wake, feel the calling..(oh, it calls, but I do not answer)
and move, move, move
until I reach a place of
astonishing beauty.
I am not a woman.
Sometimes, I still take the
Weight
of my childhood and
place it on shoulders of
self-doubt.
and
Sometimes, I remember the way
lifting builds me up.
But I am not a woman.
Lingering in that photo...
A wisdom of some sort
has trickled into my features
I see glimpses of it now.
In that momentary shot,
I look, and see memories there
In the darkness of my eyes.
In the taming of my smile.
In the strain stretched over my brow.
I am not a child.
And I am not a woman.
In that simple shot
I look, and I see a woman.
I am not a woman.
I have never worked for a lifestyle,
given birth for an allowance
I have never truly loved a man.
I am not a woman.
I do not have the means to
Transport
myself
to wake, feel the calling..(oh, it calls, but I do not answer)
and move, move, move
until I reach a place of
astonishing beauty.
I am not a woman.
Sometimes, I still take the
Weight
of my childhood and
place it on shoulders of
self-doubt.
and
Sometimes, I remember the way
lifting builds me up.
But I am not a woman.
Lingering in that photo...
A wisdom of some sort
has trickled into my features
I see glimpses of it now.
In that momentary shot,
I look, and see memories there
In the darkness of my eyes.
In the taming of my smile.
In the strain stretched over my brow.
I am not a child.
And I am not a woman.
Literature
Mollie's Ribbons
I grew up in a small town just a few dozen miles from the closest water source—a slowly shrinking aquifer that squatted underneath the seat of Thompson County, our neighborly border. Fortunately, we hadn't yet been quite as devastated by our annual droughts as those in Oklahoma and Texas. Rumors would occasionally drift in with a tumbleweed traveler about how bad the deep South had dried up into nothing but an old dusty lake bed, but these flashes of news were too few and too far between to be counted on as up to date or even true.
Once, I heard one of my distant cousins, a boy by the name of Harold, was said to have been caug
Literature
Empty Gardens
It was a wine-petaled pansy
that my mother pruned from the garden box;
it reminded me
that I had blossomed late and wilted.
At fourteen I created pansy petals of my own,
waking up with hot-fisted cramps
and the proof I was a woman.
I was not a rose, perennial,
as I went from blooming monthly
to not at all.
I would rather spend a day
curled up like the fetus I may never carry
than flat on my back wondering
why God allowed worse women than me
to bear children.
Literature
Sacchariferous
for the Admiral
my dandelions speak of
the kitchen, brimming
with sun-streaked sugar
and mended-over smiles.
floured fingerprints cloud the sky,
but every broken egg is one more yellow flower.
in sweetgrass and flowers
i find white-leaf bandages for cracked shells. coils of
sky
fill the bowl to the brim-
the world is a clean smile
wrapped in sugar.
everything here is white and pale as sugar
gathered to mend your flowered
smile.
i wish you'd swallow always fields of
dandelions that brim
with every clean, clear sky.
i'll measure out the sky
in cups of sugar.
fogged upon the rim
of the flour bowl- your fingerprints in flowe
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So serious lately 
Edit: Wow! I am so surprised and astonished at all of your kind words and encouragement. I feel so honored to have received such recognition and am ever so grateful! Transformed a crappy day(and crappy week) into a happy one, just knowing so many read and loved this piece of me and saw it within themselves. Thank you all
hugs for each and every one of you: 
Edit: Wow! I am so surprised and astonished at all of your kind words and encouragement. I feel so honored to have received such recognition and am ever so grateful! Transformed a crappy day(and crappy week) into a happy one, just knowing so many read and loved this piece of me and saw it within themselves. Thank you all
hugs for each and every one of you: Edit 12/5/13: Changed second line, removing "(still, I feel the bullet there)." It felt way too cliche from the moment I first wrote it, and I still cannot stand it to this day, so decided finally to remove it.
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Congratulations on your well-deserved DD!!! 
