The Blank Page

In every journal I have ever written in, I have left the first page blank.

The first page has always frightened me.

To occupy the first page is bold.

Bold because

it was something I never felt that I could do

(at least not well enough). 

It was never explicitly said that I couldn’t,

but parts of my life made me

best at feeling safe with second.  

To occupy the first of anything is a risk.

Fear taught me that choices in my life

needed permission, first. 

Permission from the powers that be,

not myself.

I convinced myself that if I did anything first

it must have been stolen from someone else,

never really allowing myself to feel the opportunities

to shine,

shrinking my heart the whole time.

These thoughts enacted 

my heart's oppression,

these fears a winner,

first oppressor.

Making myself a second page writer,

though a writer,

I wrote.

Yearning to change. 

It changed, as I grew,

because love did its magic. 

Life kept finding me feeling it,

unconditionally too.

It had already changed. 

as I reviewed,

many women wore first as an honour.

First to fly, first to invent, first to protest, first to lead.

More women occupying the first page of the press.

It changed as I read women's writing.

Witnessing

each first page filled.

Pouring courage

into my well.

It changed by travelling the world.

Watching women occupy space,

witnessing their life's work with delight.

I saw them, and then

I could see myself too.

Every woman speaking to the little revolutionary inside

yearning to write on her very first page.

As I write this today

I feel encircled by an intangible force,

helping me occupy

something long thought forbidden,

authoring a place  

felt unauthorized by fear. 

This is significant,

writing words

on the first blank page of this book. 

It is a moment,

and I stand proud.

For I know that

in using my hands to

speak from my heart,

I am

delicately destroying

the cage around a singing bird.