Where is the rulebook? Where
is the 1950’s, ‘happy homemaker’ conditioning
to accept, and love, a woman’s fate?
The fate of perceived sexes,
of explicities, of dying
from innumerable responsibilities
as a souled being because
her body bore children? Somehow,
a ruler was manufactured
without an open mind, with
the calculated insidiousness
of a 'Wannabe Ruler'.

She needs some new rules.
She needs, if rules are set,
to know the ‘why’ behind the ‘wherefore’…

There are natural rules,
set by circumstances of planetary actualities.
Or, cloned rules, of eventuality.
Even, her personal favorite, rules set by Chaos.
There are rules of obedience,
rules of passion, of reason, of madness.

She wants to know ‘who’ sets these rules.
Why does she have to rehash guilts percepted,
agonized over, wept about, and, finally,
uneasily settled? Why does an action
by another tilt the bruised balance?

She wants to be herself.
But, that breaks so many rules,
she knows it will never be.

Erin Elizabeth Kelly-Moen
© Copyright 3/13/05