To Be Known

I am my Daddy's Daughter

before I will be known as somebody's Mother

or somebody's Wife

but will they know I was more than that;

will they know, I was alive?

That I was rich in rhetoric

or that I could wave emotions like a god with music

or that I could tell Picasso from Van Gogh

or where people feared, I would go. 

That through autumns and springs

like Hamlet, learned how to be a king

and ruled my kingdom 

power as loud as a drum

shinning with the strength of the sun

like Elizabeth or Hatsheput 

and worked with as much tenacity and vitality as I could. 

That I stepped out of the pages of those stories

glowing with the pride in my identity

that belongs only to me, blossoming 

like a rose through concrete

And were you to walk my way in a noisy subway

you would see the assertions in my face

and hear the power in my words

when I must entice the little girls

to believe they can become more than titles 

but instead define and be their own fighters and writers

as well as lovers, dreamers, and heroes.

So when you read my story and turn my pages

you will read my identity bursting from its cages,

the landscapes and the journeys

that I was a fully in-depth character in the story of my life 

and that I was fully alive.