I didn't know that this was going to be a poem...

I started writing my thoughts, and this is what decided that it wanted to live in the world.

Make of it what you will.  I'm just the messenger.

--Nicole

Today, I found myself considering all of the doors that would have been closed to me
had I been born at a different time
or a different place
or into different circumstances.

I considered all of the things that I do on a regular basis 
and wondered at what I would have to subtract from myself 
in order to be "respectable:"

1. All of the things that women aren't "supposed" to do.
2. All of the things that black people "can't" do.

Tiny erasures that leave ghosts behind, howling at arbitrary injustices.

A wave of relief washed over me, momentarily, because I live in the now.
And justice imperfect and incomplete is better than complete injustice.

A sobering tsunami soon followed:
Too many people will never know the now.
Too many people born into different circumstances in different places 
still stand nose to wood
at a door that was opened to someone else
only moments before.