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| Photo by Elyana Faye Batungbacal |
women survey the stage
with careful interest
grateful gestures,
sly smiles
some are new,
but only to this
years of making sense of things
of lines, of statistics
of how to carefully configure
the new world
as she takes the spotlight
she waves and nods
until her head is worn,
until the speech dies down
to a murmur so hopeful
thank you, she starts
because we have been recognized
although it took a room full of women
and a few hundred years
maybe in a couple more, she continues,
indignant
we will have no use for separate rooms
and shinier trophies
because numbers don't lie
and neither do they discriminate
tomorrow,
she ends with a flourish
the codes will spell equal
and in a distant time
we will be revered
even more
