Teach me how to be a feminist

You ask if I can teach you to think
in zigzag instead of dotted lines
there isn't much I can do to connect the dots
with words

words do not stitch everything
there are ends looser than letters
to sound, faster than speech
to fury

you ask again for me to teach you
to respect the woman I am
to go past the complimentary items
that come

with a woman. A touch like a breeze
docile, her eyes to the cracks in the pavement
her voice, tender like lilacs
too fragile

to break a woman doesn't need muscles
you should know better. To break a woman
you require patience and ignorance
that pave questions like these

how to be a feminist without losing my sex
without turning into an abjuration
for thought and for sharp tongues
defending the piling of kitchen dust

to be a feminist, I tell you, read the way
a woman curves into being
like an answer to a question
she never asked

like the world belongs to her
as it crumples into baby biscuit
for her son and daughter, to read a woman
 like a tree she clips the old to launch her branches
live and let live
 kiss her soul, once in a while
every woman needs just that,
before the questions begin again.