Today’s poem might not make sense. It makes sense to me, at least it did while I was writing it. If I revisit it tomorrow, will it? I would like to think I could understand my own mind from day to day, but there are times I do not understand myself. You can hardly be blamed if you do not understand.

I often think about nothing. What is it? We can’t actually answer that, though most of us think we can. It is the absence of something. But that is meaningless in a world where there is no absence of something. So I decided to write about nothing…and use it to make a statement about women who are not privileged to live in the west.

NOTHING

Nothing.
What is nothing?
It teases me,
It amuses me to think about.

 I empty my pockets.
Nothing.
Emptiness is nothing.
Nothing is emptiness.

 I am not nothing.
I do not understand nothing.
I have never known nothing.
No one is nothing.

 And yet…

 Nothing is often what women are thought to be.
Nothing is what they are thought to know.
Nothing is what they are allowed to do.
Nothing is what they are allowed to own.

 I am a woman.
I am not nothing.
I am something.
But if I lived somewhere else in the world,

 That statement could possibly get me killed.