Woman

Woman

Keep bleeding,
Stop needing,
What you want,
And want, instead,
The things you need.

Stop crying,
Keep lying to yourself,
And alone in the dark,
Let the truth slip by silently and undetected
By any radar.

There is no room for emptiness
In your head anymore
No room to slide around
The hundreds of chairs in your heart
They sit there, rigid
Locked in, end to end, tense and crowded,
So let them be.

Learn by rote their order and number,
Assign them colors and feelings to help you remember
Who used to occupy their seats.
Forget the names themselves,
They will only confuse you.

Burn away the excess fat
Of old terrors and madness
With the slow fires of exactitude.
Let the chaff of past dreams
Fall back into the earth that they may be renewed.

Do not harden into bitterness,
And yet take care lest your tenderness paralyze you.

Learn not to chase and beg,
But wait silently to be chosen and collected,
For your particular glory,
And thus grow to become a woman.