NaPoWriMo
2024, April 30 Prompt
Amazon
In my mind I am normal sized.
But others have called me an Amazon.
I am not sure how they mean it
but I refuse to take it as anything but a complement.
Being, an Amazon, does make it harder
to fit in. To clothes, conversations,
conventional female roles.
What is worse is that my mother,
although not an Amazon in size,
is most certainly one in spirit
and modelled this for my sister and I.
Each of us in our own way lives
on the edge of the known world,
as the Amazons were purported to do.
I don’t remember there being
a magic girdle. Unless magic means
missing, or absent. The Empresses’
new girdle.
My husband is like Julia’s
Stanley Tucci. Wasn’t at first but
his head has been moving
forward and down.
What is funny is that some part of me
still tries to wear delicate earrings,
light pink, and flails and flexes
my wrists like a tiny princess might.
Even at the gym, where I lift
more than my friends with my
calloused, thick hands.
I remember being at a swim meet
in Texas in the ‘80s. It felt like a gathering
of my people. It was strange to feel
so normal, but I missed the view.