By: Stella Saalman
It’s a new year, and we’re both different people than when we started off. You had your questions, and answers, while I’m still struggling with mine, wrestling it in the mud, out in the field.
You couldn’t handle me—that’s what you learned. Warm inside the house, you’ve made your decision; my boots sink further into the slop, still reckoning with that age-old query, the muck-sow all women contend with at some time or another:
As a woman, do you do what society expects of you, even if it drives you to choose that which could destroy you, or do you reject the expectations, knowing society will destroy you as a consequence?
I expect to continue my fight, well into the next decade—how nice it must be, to leave me behind, alone on the farm, and never once wonder if you’ll ever be done with stinking of pig.
Stella Saalman is a writer from the Midwest, and holds a MA in Art History. Her poems have been published in several publications, most recently appearing in Cathexis Northwest Press and She Speaks.