Mrs.

I am like a local hero
Dying with the wrong name.
Centuries of women
Have sojourned with men
In the borders of his story, not hers.
This salutation nibbles predatorily
On the very crust of who I am!

Like a photograph
Shut within a silver wedding frame,
I gasp for assurance at being.
Listless, like an antibody,
In respiratory distress,
I am immune to living as someone else
Who shares my name, but not my self.

I declare to sandwich myself, as Lord
Of my own square footage,
No longer in uniformity
And free to be me.