What I’m learning about women aging
is we don’t do it alone –
everything able to dust gather
lines alongside us, trinkets and trophies
defiant on a cherry shelf,
saved from the fate
of the thrift shop.
We think when someone passes,
this time they’ll look twice,
ask what we knew before now,
where we discovered truth. Beauty.
But mostly we see each other,
silver and heavy in our limited number,
tarnishing into unrecognizable.
Just things atop meaningful things.
Waiting to be remembered.
Her mother told her when she was young –
Be the kind of woman who can keep a family united.
A woman who guards and protects fragile relationships,
who cushions each family bond, so they don’t break.
But no one ever taught her how to fix the broken
pieces of her, trying to keep people together.
Too often are women expected to be the glue –
as if we are born to repair, hold together and rescue.
Too often are women left broken because the only thing
they couldn’t put back together was themselves.
Too often women break because they were never taught
to strengthen their foundations before learning to cement the lives of others.
