Equality is crooked like a child’s block tower,
tumbling down at the will of your finger
Or the whistle of your breath.
You’ve given us permission to fall,
So we lay scrambled as broken eggshells.

But we are not just penny candy,
Artificial and sickly sweet as the media portrays us,
Disintegrating against the touch of your lips.
And we are not just mascara and heels
Or tanned legs, sprouting as bean shoots from magazines
Or exotic birds, squawking for your attention in a zoo.

We are certainly not just housewives,
Drowning in baby formula and cooking oil,
Waiting for your arms at the end of the day
To wrap us up as swaddled newborns.
And we are not specks of dust,
Trapped within the four walls of home,
content with floating in the light rays
that penetrate the prison windows.

No, we are ears, tired of listening
And mouths, cramped into oppressed lines
And hands, callused from grasping independence
Even as it trickles like sand through our fingers.
We are as capable as you.