By Anna Ortmann
Featured in Caesura 2020: Imago
Becoming
I am becoming.
Someone penned this line, in some poem, in some rhyme, and after spending time, trying to decide if this was a phrase I could get behind, I came to this:
If I become, then do I qualify or receive acceptance.
If I become, does that mean I change and defy a requiem of chance.
Lest after all my becoming, and all my going, should they say, what has she become?
At what cost do we leverage the becoming?
At expense of a beckoning in our souls, and a calling in our spirits?
At the benchmark of expectation and the settlement of exasperation?
To become like those who’ve left a legacy.
Or to try to correct what we see as a travesty.
As we become, maybe we’ve come undone.
But maybe we’ve stumbled in the waiting room of becoming by the due process of the passing of time.
Where we wait for the sun to shine, and the grass to grow before we will take one step and go.
Can you become out of darkness? Can you become out of something less?
Have we allowed margin for the marginalized to become more than that process?More than the program and the recess?
More than the box and donation, the check and recitation, more than the day in and day out, that is what it has become.
We need to enter into our becoming as a beginning of a became.
We need to assert the became as if we have long known its name,
As if we have already achieved the certificate, yet do not have the fame.
This will be our quiet becoming.
Tired
I’m a little tired. I’m a little tired of being the woman in the room. I’m a little tired of being tied to the expectation that I should wait my turn to talk until I’ve been asked to speak. I’m a little tired of being told that I should stop while I’m ahead before I get in too deep. I’m a little tired from the side-stepping I have to do to get my foot in the door. I don’t think it should take that much more. It’s perplexing to me that though women bear life they also bear consequences of others who see they have no responsibility to defend her. It’s frustrating to me that she listens so well and yet her words fall on deaf ears. That after years and years of feminist reform it seems that females are still not the norm. I’m a little tired of having to use that word. Of having to send a ripple to rupture the culture. Of having to culture myself to deflect the ripples. I’m a little tired of all that. I’m a little tired of being the woman in the room. I’m a little tired of being tied to the expectation that my role is limited by my emotional capacity and that emotions have the capacity to convince me that I’m limited. I’m a little tired of being told “it’s guy talk” as if the topics being talked of I’ve never encountered. I’m a little tired from rustling up my response in the right fashion to be received as random when I know I can craft Adidas or Nike. Yes, I’m a little tired. But. I’m also a little inspired. I’m inspired by the woman who holds her head high, or the one who holds her knowledge just shy of the grasp of someone who doesn’t desire to know her for her wisdom. I’m inspired by the ones learning that they have permission to take up space. Inspired by space and the human race to find our common denominator and make a place to allow some permanent reality. This is a marvelous reality. In this reality, I’m not as tired. I can sleep a little easier. I can rest a little deeper. And I can find energy in being one of many women in the room.
Anna Ortmann is a senior from Kokomo, IN studying Worship Arts & Music Ministry, and Graphic Design. Poetry and writing have always been a side interest of hers and she appreciates the times she finds to explore them further. The inspiring thing about words to Anna is the way you can fit them together to explain things that seem unexplainable.
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