To be real..

PUNA

Before the butterfly took flight, she shed both her misfortune and achievement from the cocoon. Freedom now exists underneath her wings as her metamorphosis was both defiant and beautiful.

Life is served up in petite squares on a ceramic platter. Everything I want is readily available. The best way I know how to acquire things is to show my teeth for them. I flash my innocent and gaping smile following a sincere stare into hoodwinked eyes. It’s all too easy. My future husband and I buy a pink brick house with a porcelain garden tub, call our first daughter Bella after the Twilight Saga, signup for PTA, on call jury duty, and wait in line at malls, at grocery stores, at Big Lots for our kids’ (and our friends’ kids) toys during Christmas time. After kids grew up, my vivacity dulls and younger women luster around him, as divorce papers ensue a bitter life of regret that would take over me when I feel less sexy at the end of the bottle of scotch. Ironically, in my old age when I feel the sparks have dimmed, Glenfiddich will be my companion until the glass is no longer full.
From now until then, I could go to the neighborhood metro gym and use the elliptical day in and day out to make my butt look tight. Keep on running one foot forward while the belt dredges backward and I’m actually not moving anywhere. I’ll have a playlist on the IPod strapped to my bicep with a fan on full blast, a TV right in front of my face, and a Vogue opened up to Megan Fox on top of the machine. I hold a perfect body image in my mind as I’m fixated on the calorie counter. I’m huffing and puffing neurotically imagining cellulite is just falling off with every tick. This will make me a more beautiful woman. Well, I’ll be a prize, fit for a commendable man. Prince Charming will find me at the local bar as we get to know each other over cocktails and appetizers, still existing in the realm of the predictable. I can only hope that my butt is firm enough to thwart inevitable statistics of later-in-life fidelity, annulment, and despair. I see my future as the mate, the child bearer, the domesticated, and the refined.
And there is the story of my life recapped in two short paragraphs, even considering my literary and sardonic undertones. Truth is I yearn for a sweat I can’t just shower off from. I want it to seep into the deepest folds of my tissues and reconstruct what has already been predisposed for me. I want to redefine everything. I don’t mean that I want to shave my hair into a Mohawk, rebel against the paradigm by picketing the capitol building, run naked through the streets to make a statement (although that ends up happening quite often…) I see the next few years of my life like boot camp, not a storybook that I already know the happy ending to.
Puna didn’t tread lightly on my ideals. The village seemed to hook up with her mistress goddess Pele to test the women who treaded their territory. When I arrived, I traded my hair brush for a machete. Layers were peeled from my charisma like an onion blossom unveiled, and then ripped open by a kitchen knife and served as a stew. These ladies were not messing around. It was time to survive, and rip open what you were made of amidst the earth opening up itself to you. I transformed the delicate to the purposeful. I let my hair down so it would keep my shoulders warm at night. I uprooted the things that I thought were pretty. I dug up the earth with my fingertips so that the seeds would feel what life feels like as they are planted. Shiny new things were no longer useful. I left my earrings and my dresses at home because I anticipated tragedy in realms of intemperance. I came here to know what it was truly like to be a real woman.

Define it: a real woman. (n.)
A real woman lives. She experiences each moment without doubt or uncertainty of her capabilities. Survival is instinct. She need not fret over her strength to align with her existence. She moves with the ebb and flow of the tides. A real woman understands. She believes her Earth mother through the soles of the feet and the beat of her heart. The moon pulls her to and from the sky, yielding strength and endurance even though days are molded by the phases of the sun. A real woman adapts. Holding her child close to her with a sincere touch as well as swinging the hammer against the wall. By her own hand, destruction redefines her rebirth. Nothing of this world can contain her. She understands the changes her body are an indication of her evolution. She symbolizes the start of new days as well as the abomination of old ways. A real woman grows with every breath. She is patient and diligent as well as soft and caring. She knows that each word spoken is a testament to what her heart may wish to speak, so she holds quiet and steady until she can unleash the powers of the feminine inside.