The Wave

A poem for International Women's Day

They feared us
as they stripped us bare,
tearing away the illusion,
the lies of what we were meant to be.
But beneath it all,
We found only raw truth,
wild,
untamed.

Not pretty.
Not soft.
Not smiling.
Not the women they wanted us to be.

Our knees shook,
as the earth quaked,
ready to swallow us whole.
But the ocean whispered our names,
and from the depths,
We screamed.
A sound so primal,
even we did not recognize it as our own.

And, we began to rise.

But don’t think we all rose gracefully,
heads high,
carrying on.
No, many of us shattered,
crumbled,
under the weight of it all.

Fear,
a relentless ghost,
swirled around us,
whispering threats.
“Go ahead,” we dared,
“Take it all away.”

In the stillness that followed,
we met ourselves. Our true selves.
Ancient, wounded souls,
Selkie’s stripped of their skin,
but not their power.

That’s when the shift began.
We took back the game,
the rules,
the autonomy they tried to steal.
We reclaimed our skin,
slipped back into the ocean’s embrace,
where we were always meant to be.

We accepted ourselves,
wild and vast as the sea,
knowing that no wave,
no storm,
could ever drown us again.
Why? Because we are the wave.

We are dangerous women,
with saltwater in our veins,
and the whole world, should we want it, lay at our feet.
Ours, equally.

We choose our fate,
and we choose
to be free.

©️Tara Shannon, 2024 The Wave
***This is based on/rewritten version of my previous poem, Dangerous Woman

#internationalwomensday

Image: Me walking along Greystones Beach, County Wicklow