What could be more feminine?

I’m reading Rachelle Toarmino’s “Flowers, Poems, Flower Poems” today. She writes:

“There are things / women know how to do. Clipped and caged and I think / that’s beautiful. What could be more feminine / than dying a slow death and another creature calling it / beautiful. A hymn for every howl. It's crazy / when you think about it. Whatever you call it / it’s the one thing that brings me back into myself, / dancing naked in the mirror and making faces in the glass. / I only ever wanted to make you feel my feeling.”

The lines dance perfectly between elegy and ode—and reflect so much of what it is to love, to want, to transform, and to hold mourning alongside beauty. The divine feminine is alive in her lines along with a critique in the ways we yield it, but also the possibilities for reawakening and harnessing the energy at a moment’s notice.