She reminds me again that the world is made for,

created by, men. That we – the women and girls

and sisters and daughters and mothers and wives –

are not meant to live stories worth telling.

 

We are the babies left in the woods by fathers

who shake their heads, choke down their disappointment,

and lament over the misfortune that we are not sons.

 

We are the children who make a home for ourselves

amongst the savagery and wildness, find comfort

in the claws and fur and teeth of a she-bear, relish

in the boundless freedom of our femininity – only

to be ripped from our self-made sanctuaries and locked

in cages meant to stifle our joy, tame our feral nature.

 

We are the girls who draw first blood, who earn the spoils

of war, only to be cast aside so the egos of lesser men will not be bruised

by our exceptionality; our cleverness is deemed luck and our mistakes

inevitable – we are made small, forced into corners, forgotten by time,

while they claim victory and spin webs of our triumphs they insist

are theirs, tales that will be mythologized for posterity.

 

We are the women who are forced back into the arms

 

of those same fathers who abandoned us all those years ago,

who have decided they want us again only after

we have proven our worth, demonstrated our desirability.

 

We are the maidens who devote ourselves to the virgin huntress, only to be

tricked into a cursed marriage we never wanted, that we avoided

at all costs, because an oracle once warned it would be our undoing.

 

We are the wives who face the wrath of vengeful goddesses

and self-righteous gods, who grow claws and fur and teeth

and are transformed back into the wildness of our youth,

destined to prowl the woods that created us and roar

at the sky for the injustices we have suffered.

 

She reminds me that while her name alleges she is “equal in weight,”

that means nothing in the minds of small men and the myths they tell.