Steinem

She says what cannot seem to eruditely pass beyond the trap (door?) of my mouth.

My mother, when I but eleven years old, said, "Read this! She says what's real. Just wait til you see." After boys teased me for my moro/a/nic last name and my brain competition.

And I did read, for a little while, until my ugly hair removed the awe from their eyes and replaced it with disdain.

haveprettyhairbedumbhaveprettyhairbedumb instead.

and now I have so hard a time being other than muted.

So I rescued her from the dust and the dark and the shelf of the library corner and looked upon the same cover, unchanged, and with those big beautiful aviator glasses pressing into her cheeks and straight but wired hair parted down the middle.

If I met her...would I be too shy to tell her what other women were not too nervous to say? That:

"you are the inside of me."

Or would I swoon like girls at rock concerts or would I cry too hard or would I clutch at that tiny frame housing hugeness and whisper/beg her not to leave me or this world?

And tell her...I knew this was real...and not in my head...and you only reassure me...

that after all, I'm really not crazy.

at all.