Origins

"How did you get like this," she asked me.
As if I followed a faulty map or a poorly written recipe
But I paused before answering
How *did* I get to be this person, this me?
Blame Alice Paul
And Sesame Street
L.M. Montgomery
And my grandma

Genetics for the sense I have to disregard dogma

Jane Eyre for voicing thoughts I hadn't the words to speak

Life for the scars
and
the strength to refuse to repeat history

Point the finger at Shakespeare's Portia, Celie, Elizabeth Bennet and
My fifth grade teacher

Or my rebellious discovery of Sylvia Plath

Maybe it was knitting

Or the first woman I realized I 'loved' loved

Or the position of the moon at the hour I was born.