Women's Writes - Works

This morning I made the biggest mistake of my life. I opened my trap in front of the guys at the office. They were dissing women, as usual, talking about how weak we were, how ridiculous we were, how stupid we were. Well, I certainly managed to prove I was stupid. It wasn’t that I disagreed with them, or that I presented evidence to back up my claim. No, that was all right. I proved I was stupid by accepting their challenge. Prove it, they said. Not statistics, those lie. Prove you can take pain. Prove we can’t break you.

Today I will be uppity.
Yes, I will be uppity.

What should I say?
Should I tell you it’s been great?
I loved the flowers,
The wine,
The black eye?

Megan was at work when the doctor called. Michael had been particularly nice to her ever since she took off for the biopsy, and now he came to get her rather than bellowing her name across the store. She pulled her hands out of the dishwater, wiped them on a damp towel, and dripped toward the phone.

The doctor left her to get undressed and lie on the examining table. He returned with the nurse when she was ready. She shivered; it was cold in here. The doctor washed his hands, and she was glad because his hands were warm as they felt around the small spot on her breast where Brady felt that…lump thing…last week.

The image of Brady’s bathroom before she moved in flashed before her eyes, but she didn’t say anything. It had taken her half a day to get all the caked on soap scum off the tub, and the toilet…well, it probably should have been a Superfund site. She smiled a tight smile and went back to the bathroom, leaving Brady to struggle with Mia’s diaper. He knew how to change a diaper. Megan suspected he did it badly so she would always do it. Same thing with putting dishes away. He always put the big dishes on top of the small ones until she finally took it away from him and did it herself so they wouldn’t have any more broken dishes.

“Huh?” Brady was looking at a small hole in the baseboard. “Bet we’re gonna get mice. You better call the landlord.”

She opened the window to hand out a drink, and recoiled. There was a man in the car, and he was naked from the waist down. He had a hard on, and grinned at her as he caressed it and ran his tongue along his lips.

Time is not a woman’s friend
Because she is expected to be young.
Ready to work,
Ready to play,
Ready to love,
Always ready for the gaze of men

Two years ago, Lynette had participated in a research project at the college. A student was surveying older women to see if they were satisfied with their life, if they were happy with their choices. She had bubbled and chirped about how fulfilling it had been to give up her career and settle down to take care of her husband and her children, be a full time mother and devote her life to service.

Hi, everyone. Long day today, so I feel like I’m copping out. I am giving you a haiku. I am simply too exhausted to write any more syllables. But it has been a satisfying day, spent doing work I find interesting and rewarding, work I am able to do thanks to the battles fought by those brave, wonderful women who came before. I want to make sure their work wasn’t in vain.

“Well, it’s like this. You know how men are always sitting next to you, running their hand along the seat until it touches your knee, or reaching across to open the window, managing to contact your breast?”

Accommodate.
You tell me I should accommodate.
You mean
Dumb myself down.

FEMINAZI is on her knees, scrubbing the floor. The mode of her dress suggests she is not well off; in fact, she is not well off enough to own the kitchen she is scrubbing. WOMAN enters, carrying a basket full of jars.

Tonight I have nothing to say.
The shape of the world is strange.
The smell of the world is different.
The taste of the world is bitter.
Tonight I have nothing…nothing.     

Once upon a time…that was the story she heard as a little girl. Once upon a time, there was a woman…a great woman, a tall woman, a woman who had everything. Once upon a time, a woman ran for president, and actually got votes. In fact, some rumors claimed she got more votes than the male candidate.

A poem about him…that special man. You know, the one we all wish we never met.

The pundits have determined that the fight is between the middle-of-the-road and the radical. Biden and Klobuchar represent the first; Warren and Sanders represent the second. One woman, one man in each camp. The pundits reporting on the South Carolina primary advised Warren and Klobuchar to withdraw, to allow Biden and Sanders to fight it out for the nomination, throwing their voters into one or the other camps. This makes sense, if you think about it, but…wait, what?

It was midnight. The office was dark, except for the small light burning at her desk. The last page…the last paragraph…the last word. It was done. Lisa tried to remember how many days she’d been working on this, but her brain seemed frozen from exhaustion. She flipped off the light, slid her feet back into the shoes under her desk, and escaped at last, ready for bed.