What is a woman?

My poetic definition

The confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson as the first Black female to hold the position inspired this poem. During her confirmation hearings, Justice Jackson was asked to “provide a definition for the word ‘woman.’”

My dear friend Ashley was in DC on the day of the confirmation, with her family and their remarkable signs. We had texted before her trip to the steps of the Supreme Court building about ideas of how we could define the word. The words she chose were awesome, and her prompt inspired me to create some definitions of my own.