Check box: Woman Writer

I am a woman and a writer
It was never a case of division
a need to be clashing  over the choice
The parts fit onto me
like a size 12 tank top
loose around the shoulders cut
clearly for the world to see a few
edges here and there and a tone design.
I am the check in the box of woman writers
not  just feminists raging, I speak woman as
a native tongue
and think woman as I dress each morning
I feel woman on the street and woman in my head
woman behind a computer screen and a woman in bed.
I fall in the cracks of women before me: freedom fighters
artists, saints and sinners
coloring the canvases in shades
of blue, ivory and stains of red as they walk
above the sheer, sliding fabric
throwing down all that weights them down
I am a woman and a writer who
dreams in full color and slips
character portfolios in her
afternoon slumbers
between tea cups and afternoon jokes.
 I am a woman writer
but I do not write with my womb
nor with my breasts
I do not rage with my red lips
or lined eyes,
I keep body parts for their designated purposes
 but I scribble about a woman
being a woman with one heart
and five heads
I scrawl the world of crawlers
out of wombs of joy and bloody misery
I type set misery and scratch my way
around fear with the backs of my pen.
From the shoulder blades to the toes
I become a compressed mixture of all before me
I am a woman writer
My words, my children
are my legacy