Vera’s womanifesto
I am twenty-one
I am a woman
I am free
free to do any damn thing I please that doesn't cause unnecessary harm to someone else
I am free to sing in the shower at 5 am
to masturbate three times in a day
to romanticize
and romance
my own life
I am free to pester my roommates to become vegan
and free to laugh at their anti-vegan jokes
I am free to kiss a boy
I am free to kiss a girl
I am free to hike my rates, for gardening and for singing, because I feel I'm worth it.
I am free to bake my own bread
I am free to tell my friend that she's not going to that clinic alone, when she says, scared, she doesn't "need" me.
I am free to sleep with one man on our first date
and to tell another to slow down.
I am free to use passionate language in an academic paper.
I am free to walk home alone at 3am
and to not take offense, being mistaken for a Whore,
but to inform the man that such is not my profession
I am free to cuss out the guy who groped my friend
I am free to climb a tree
I am free to be a "fag hag"
I am free to take many photos of me naked
I am free to think I look real good in them
I am free to not know my own mind
but to constantly explore it, and with it
I am free to slap myself upside the head
when I notice my own buried prejudices
I am free to work to break their hold on me
I am free to be an American in Canada and love both sides of the border
I am free to write poetry
I am free to write halting guitar songs
I am free to beat all five of my guy friends at poker late one night
I am free to drink tequila and like it
I am free to wander the world
I am free to talk straight
I am free to love unconditionally
I am free to love my parents
I am free to sing loudly as I bike through slushy city streets
I am free to talk to strangers
I am free to dance with the wind
I am twenty-one
I am a woman
I am free.
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