international women's day, eight years later.

Tonight I am thinking of my Women's Day spent in Eastern Ukraine.  

I'm thinking of yellow, puffy mimosa flowers handed out to women in the streets

of friendly greetings in the cold, March air 

of thoughtful friends giving us purple hyacinths 

of a possible spring 

of women's shoulders

(hunched down, straight, tall, burdened) 

of sisterhood and solidarity 

of the sense that I was part of something larger, 

something bigger, 

connecting me to women I would have never met or seen; 

women whose stories are so much larger

than I can ever truly know.