The Emancipated Woman

I am grateful I have a choice
I am grateful to the shoulders I stand on..
I am grateful that I don't have to be grateful..
All the time!

I choose education, I choose liberation
I choose doing exactly what I want
In exactly the way I like..
I choose flippant romances when I am bored
I turn down men, and they accept it
Without batting an eyelid..
I go out with my girlfriends in dark little by lanes
With overcrowded nightclubs
I wake up not entirely aware of what happened
The night before..
I choose this all and I seldom regret anything..

But sometimes, when I want to choose
What my instinct nudges me to choose..
A lifetime built on cooperation, perhaps compromises even
A long lasting friendship, with more of us to it
Than all of me. Of the gaps between milestones and achievements
That are not as pleasant as the medals that come at the end
Stretches of time that can be folded away
Only with a lot of patience
Of that latent strength that can only be active
When it is obviously passive
Knowing that sometimes, to win, in a true sense
You have to lose little battles and quietly dismantle your ego..
With all of these, I find myself oddly without choice..

Had I not been given the choice,
I would have probably learned to deal with it..
But the fact that I have a choice, throws me into a strange dilemma
Then sometimes, unknowingly, I wear those shiny stilettoes
And make my way to the busiest nightclub..
For an entirely new, yet sufficiently overacted iteration

It is one of those great ironies of life
When your freedom ties you down..

Retrace

I have walked this path before
I can see myself here, my very first time..
How I took the wrong turn and had to walk back
And start, all over again
That stub of a tree by that curve -- I used it as a chair
And wept, thinking I will never make it
I sat by the lake and forgot where I was going
Only to be rushed by the urgency of my goal
Sometimes, in moments of utter embitterment,
I swore that I would never come back here
But by the time it all ended, my feelings of hate and love did too..
I don't know if that is good or bad, but that is how it is!

Now that I walk again, with you, I feel a bit concerned
A bit constrained to be honest, with this iteration
But it is so refreshing to know that it ends
The crunching of maple leaves under our footsteps..
I want to hug you when you want to give up
I want to tell you that I have been there
Exactly on that stub of a tree of a chair!
I can see where you could make mistakes, well..
I prefer just to see it and smile, not stop you from it
For however painful it is now, I know you will own it next time
You will be eager to walk; for the familiarity and nostalgia
You will be confident, cautious and eager to teach..
And I don't want to rob you of that beautiful Retrace.