Glass Ceilings Full of Stars
The first female astronaut to complete a spaceflight was Valentina Tereshkova. This poem is dedicated to her.
The girl is eight years old: light on her feet and heavy with her hands. Her reaching mind races the boys after school and they make excuses each time she wins. She is fast and witty but her father tells her not to talk back and not to talk back means not to talk at all and so she admires the stars who speak volumes in the dark; their shining silences the voices speaking over hers.
The girl is sixteen years old: beautiful and brilliant, but both are bullshit when money is tight so she takes a job at the nearest factory, grey and glamour less. She watches as women become machine, watches as worlds begin to bleed, and she begins to scream, afraid of her feet growing into the ground but the idea of being rooted in despair scares her into jumping from heights. She begins to parachute, relishing in sights of freedom in the air. She talks to the clouds, she laughs with the birds, she reaches for the sky is all ears.
The girl is 26 years old: no longer a girl but still spoken to like one. She trains and studies and bides her time until she is finally selected to fly. She is fitted for her spacesuit and her alterations remind her that she is not just one of the guys as the engineer slides by a joke about her shape. She holds her chin high and reminds herself that weight is nothing but a measurement of gravity.
The astronaut launches: Zero gravity holds more value to her than the men who came before her because she has been fighting not to be held down or back all her life. she looks at the earth from above and is empowered by the sight of such trite insignificance. The others, they carry the image of a tiny earth in their pocket like an anchor but she carries it like a parachute, like a hot air balloon, like something holding her feet above the dirt of the ground.
She orbits Earth 12 times and she learns from the meteors; you are allowed to spark without worrying about burning the ones who try to obstruct your fire.
She orbits 24 times and she learns from the constellations; It’s okay if the seams that hold you together are imaginary, so long as you keep your eyes on the light.
36 times and she learns from the moon, that to reflect another’s light is not to create your own; you will never be whole until you learn to be your own sun.
48 times and she learns what she already knew; no one silences the stars. Their blinding brilliance speaks for them, and she shines and she shines and she shines.
The girl, the astronaut, the star is in her thirties, now a mother, and her daughter is tired of hearing clichés about the stars and her daughter wonders why her mother did not hold enough gravity to keep her father around and her mother does not know how to tell her that some men are black holes and they will never be satisfied, no matter how much light you give them.
Her daughter does not understand this, but one day, light years from now, she will look up to the skies and sigh, because she finally understands that it is because of her mother that she is allowed to speak, even when she has not been spoken to, and that it is because of her mother their home was filled with windows, instead of mirrors, and it is because of her mother that she has never been afraid of heights.