Lesbian Existence Comprises Both The Breaking Of

But Can You Imagine How Some Of Them Were Envying You Your Freedom To Work, To Think, To Travel, To Enter A Room As Yourself, Not As Some Child’s Mother Or Some Man’s Wife?…we Have No Familiar, Ready-made Name For A Woman Who Defines Herself, By Choice, Neither In Relation To Children Nor To Men, Who Is Self-identified, Who Has Chosen Herself.

There Must Be Those Among Whom We Can Sit Down And Weep And Still Be Counted As Warriors.

Women Have Been Driven Mad, “gaslighted”, For Centuries By The Refutation Of Our Experience And Our Instincts In A Culture Which Validates Only Male Experience. The Truth Of Our Bodies And Our Minds Has Been Mystified To Us. We Therefore Have Primary Obligation To Each Other: Not To Undermine Each Other’s Sense Of Reality For The Sake Of Expediency; Not To Gaslight Each Other.

The Moment Of Change Is The Only Poem.

Across The Curve Of The Earth, There Are Women Getting Up Before Dawn, In The Blackness Before The Point Of Light, In The Twilight Before Sunrise; There Are Women Rising Earlier Than Men And Children To Break The Ice, To Start The Stove, To Put Up The Pap, The Coffee, The Rice, To Iron The Pants, To Braid The Hair, To Pull The Day's Water Up From The Well, To Boil Water For Tea, To Wash The Children For School, To Pull The Vegetables And Start The Walk To Market, To Run To Catch The Bus For The Work That Is Paid. I Don't Know When Most Women Sleep.