PARENTHESES

Our voices offered up to God in song
are relegated to parentheses.
The “women’s part” is brief
and then silenced while your booming voices
take command.
We are “subservient with
brains of balsa wood.”
Legalistic regulations barricade us
from distributing our intelligence to men.
Our ministry is limited to children’s ears
and other women.
You sit on your thrones
in front of us and speak your truths.
I am subservient to no one but God.
I am not molded by a man.
I was formed before you took your positions
and held them over us.
I have broken out of the parentheses you created,
and I will not bend.