What Women Do

This is a repost, but a follow up to Jos's poem.


(After a funeral for a friends father-in-law. It struck me that women hold funerals in bars, dressing rooms, parked cars and bedrooms. We gather together to mourn the death of a person, a dream, or a pant size. It starts young, before our birth, before we can name it...and we carry and encourage each other without request. It's what women do. )

Women have this ancient power to gather 'round and puff life into death. Even their hugs come from ancient places, translating through vibrations of incredible nurture honed in igloos and covered wagons. Five friends will gather at funeral's pew to surround with a life force that requires notice. And what we do for her, is done for me, for you, for she. At the moment of my own falter, one will steady. She...a friend of decades...she will pause her shoulder beneath my arm and limp me back, or forward, to wherever winds of change dictate. It's what women do. She...a friend of just weeks, will write a note which weights hope in my favor and sooths me enough to see life after this...this trauma, this loss, this heartbreak.

She, of waiting room only, will brush me with her glitter and make me shine enough to present a smile amidst unspeakable grief, not because she knows it's origin nor needs to know, it's just what women do. She will cry only because tears have flowed my cheeks and dropped on the carpet we both worry with our paces.


And when I've nothing left, no will of my own with which to continue this journey, she...my hearts true friend, my sister if ever I could choose, my soul...she pumps my heart until it beats again. She fills my lungs until they gasp in their own right. She takes my thigh and lifts the leg to begin the steps I cannot mount. My arms swing to her rhythm and she blinks my eyes. She lives in me until I can live apart. And I could say...it's just what women do, but it wouldn't be true. It's what women do, and so much more, when she carries me.
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