I’ll wander these streets until I’m dead tired,

I’ll learn how to live by myself, how to meet the eyes

of each passing face and remain the same woman.

This coolness that rises, reaching into my veins,

is a truer awakening than any I’ve felt

at morning: the only thing is, I feel stronger

than my body, and the morning’s edge is colder than ever.

The mornings when I was twenty are gone.

Tomorrow, twenty-one: tomorrow I’ll walk down the street;

I remember each stone, each wide strip of sky.

Tomorrow people will start to see me again,

and my head will be higher and I might even pause

to glance at myself in the windows. Other mornings,

I was young without knowing it, not even aware

that it was me walking by, that I was a woman,

my own woman. The skinny child that I was

awoke from a wail that had lasted for years:

now it’s as if that wail never happened.

And all I want now are colors. Colors don’t cry,

they’re like waking up: tomorrow the colors

come back. Each woman will walk down the street,

each body a color—even the children.

And my body, dressed in a frivolous red

after so much pallor, will get its life back.

I’ll feel the gazes of others gliding around me,

and I’ll know that I’m me. And glancing around,

I’ll see myself among people. Every new morning

I’ll walk down the street, looking for colors.