It is an honor to be included in Event USA Entertainment’s celebration of International Women’s Day, and I am humbled by this recognition. This noteworthy occasion gave pause to ruminate on what it means—to me, at least—to be a woman in this body. Naturally, I first began to consider the women who have impelled me to be the mother, writer, and human behind the words you read before you. I often turn to my heroines as inspirations for my poetry, and too, as I have been dancing with a late stage, very rare cancer, I turn to my female muses for the finesse to carry me through the greyest of days.
I pore on the legacy of Jackie Kennedy, who perhaps is the ultimate afflatus in regards to how I carry myself as a woman. I admire her grace and poise, the way that even whilst traversing unimaginable sorrow and tremendous scrutiny she not only maintained a quiet pride and doe-eyed bravery, she did so making it look elegant—effortless, even. In hospital rooms, my nurses often remark that they are surprised to see me putting on mascara in the face of chemo and the burden of terminal illness, especially since many a night I lay alone crying little black rivers onto their paper pillows. I want to look my best when my beloveds visit, true, but moreover I festoon my lashes for me. I think: What would Jackie do? She wouldn’t let this thorny sitch make a mess of her. I suppose it’s her dignity I admire most of all.
Beauty is what motivates me beyond all else, and there is nothing more beautiful than a woman walking into a room absolutely comfortable in her own, silky skin. Angelina Jolie comes to mind, her humanitarian efforts, her moxie, and yes—her cheekbones. Even the fetching villainesses among us give us a sense of allure and enchantment, I do like to descend my staircase like I’m Marie Antoinette, serving robin’s egg petit-fours to my sorors. Oh, the list of magnificent women is as boundless and resplendent as the list of flowers on Earth! Joan of Arc. Foxglove. Lisa Bonet. Night-blooming jasmine. Penelope Cruz. Marilyn Monroe. Cabbage roses, gardenias. Billie Holiday. Helena Christensen. Ranunculus, anemone. Bjork. Winehouse. Courtney Love. Lavender. Goldie Hawn. Black irises. Jane Birkin. Coco Chanel. Poppies, tree-peonies. The blessed mother and hydrangea, each in pure blue. And oh, Audrey Hepburn, the patron saint of Appendix Cancer. She blooms in my heart’s garden, perennially.
I harken of all my literary heroines, among them Ada Limón, Ellen Bass, and Anne Carson— the latter of whom I had the pleasure of studying under. I was never the same poet after writing with Carson, who once offered: “I don’t want to be a person. I want to be unbearable.” The angsty adolescent girl who still lurks in some of my inkiest corners feels liberated by her words. She taught me to consider the importance of balancing the ego with the work of an artist, and this carries over into my musings as a mother and wife. I suppose the two realms can’t be neatly cleaved, if I am being honest— I am never not a poet just as I’m never not a lady. Everything I see is through a poetess’s lens, and it becomes important to challenge the latent narcissism that may rear its ugly head when we, as artists, draw from our own flawed wells of emotion and observation. I find humility, after-all, to be one of the most captivating qualities a woman might possess. Carson also informed my ideas about collaboration. In fact, because of her mentorship, I was better able to collude—in a poetic sensibility— with my partner, who often serves as the subject of my craft. She taught me that we don’t need to sunder our lovers from our work, and it fulfills me to know that my husband, Damen, appears in so much of what I do. This matters to me because he is so much a part of who I am. I find my ideas of the feminine have evolved— with each swing of the pendulum, I am becoming more demure. I at first rebuffed this, but I now embrace this return to innocence, a homecoming to all that is lovely.

My daughter, Estella, too, has edited my work and we have conspired together on various creative endeavors over the years. To think I could provide both milk and mentorship to the most important person in my life, well— I take this province terribly serious. Our daughters imbibe the way we criticize our reflections, the way we lift our chins against dolor, the way we whisper to our sisters— we are tasked with helping our babies brave the ebbing tides of womanhood.
I am unique in that I lived a life with two mothers. As an adoptee, I have embodied the unimaginable sacrifice of placing a child in the care of another. The miracle of childbirth is the single most breathtaking and magical experience of my many turns around the sun; in fact, my daughter was the first blood relative of mine whom I ever met. When she howled her first breath an ache in me was resolved, though I hadn’t known I was wounded until I saw her lips had the very same bow as mine. My birthmother was many things, a survivor, a cynic, a teenage prostitute, a victim, a paragon. She laughed like a pirate and carried absolution in an invisible bindle alongside her dreams and traumas. The woman who raised me made sure I never had want for anything, and I sing the lullaby she sang me to my own child now. I even sing it to myself sometimes when the cure gnaws worse than the disease. Tender shepherd, tender, shepherd, let me help you count your sheep…
I have been uplifted by women. I have seen the constellations above from my perch upon their slender shoulders; and I’ve looked back from their laps at the chemtrails of their bravada, the embers they’ve left glowing so I might find my way. I’ve been prayed for by women. I’ve been preyed upon by women. I’ve been loved by women who are cumulus-soft and leveled by lady-tornados. Women have spellbound me, I could watch them put their gloss on for aeons, lost in halls of sculptures of their breasts and soft bellies. I’ve been moved to tears by the sound of a woman I know on a harp, a woman I don’t know weeping solo over her martini. I’ve been cradled, rocked, and lulled by many mothers. I’ve been abandoned by one, too. I’ve had women push morphine into my veins from dank ICU’s, their touch the only thing that hasn’t hurt in days. A darling nurse held my hair back in a midnight fit of sickness, tufts of nutmeg falling out in her tender palms. My best friend coiffed me Bardot bangs on a whim, she brought her scissors to my house and said, “It’s sprouting! It’s coming back, I promise!” Women have filed my nails into bisque almonds and sharpened their claws on my heart. Kindergarten playmates, we girls with our bruised see-saw knees and blush flower crowns. High-school mean-girls, pretty and cruel. I see you in your tailored blazers, marabou, kitten-heels, your veils and golden kimonos with the giant cranes on their backs. My god you are stunning.