WIFE MATERIAL

I wear onions for earrings
And orange peels for necklaces,
Rice balls cover my breasts
And beans line my waist
The water in my pots,
Boils to a hundred degrees
Oh yes, I can cook;
That’s five whole yards of Wife Material’

My knees are permanently scarred from kneeling,
Kneeling to scrub floors,
Kneeling to wash dirty linen,
Kneeling to straighten the linen after it is clean
And oh! My back is like that of an eighty-year old's,
After all, it does carry the pain of the weight of the entire household’s worries,
That’s ten extra yards of Wife Material.

Oh, and have you seen my hands,
How rough and pale they feel
From the harshness of detergent,
And from handling the garden hoe and the garden hose and the garden scythe?
Have you seen the stories the lines on my palms tell?
Those permanent etchings, my dears,
Are an extra twenty yards of proper Wife Material