Holding My Beads (by Grace Nicholls)
Unforgiving as the course of justice
In erasable as my scars and fate.
i am here
a woman…with all my lives
strung out like beads
before me
It isn’t privilege or pity
that I seek
It isn’t reverence or safety
quick happiness or purity
but
the power to be what I am/ a woman
charting my own futures/ a woman
holding my beads in my hand
while you're ahead... 