Nearly four years ago my heart broke when Hilary Clinton lost the Presidential election. Since then it’s broken again and again due to the things the President does and says, but I’ve also gotten more angry, more willing to fight and donate and work hard to put women into power. And so when Elizabeth Warren announced she was running for President I was ecstatic. I believe she is the most qualified, best prepared, hardest working candidate out there. I donated to her campaign multiple times, I listened to what she had to say, and I was excited when I went to the polls last Tuesday to vote in the Virginia primary.

I spent the rest of the day mostly ignoring headlines related to the election – there were other things bubbling up, namely AWP’s decision to hold its annual conference in the midst of the coronavirus outbreak. I followed this on Twitter more than the election, even though I wasn’t not attending AWP this year.

And then on Tuesday night I went online and looked at the numbers and learned Warren didn’t win Virginia and she didn’t win her home state of Massachusetts. And while it wasn’t yet certain, it was likely she would drop out of the Presidential race. And my heart broke again. Jessica Valenti summed it up really well in her article, It Will Be Hard to Get Over What Happened to Elizabeth Warren. It feels like the 2016 election all over again, where a well-qualified, well-spoken, intelligent, experienced woman got tossed aside for another old, white dude. And I’m so damn tired of fighting this fight. I’m so damn tired of women getting pushed aside and not getting equal coverage or equal consideration. I’m so damn tired.

I’m not an overly-optimistic person by nature. Some might call me a pessimist but I prefer to think of myself as a realist. And four years ago I believed we were going to elect our first female president. And until last Tuesday night, I believed we had a strong chance of having another woman be the nominee. Now, with the reality of Warren dropping out of the Presidential race, I’m left wondering if I’ll see a woman president in my lifetime. I’m only forty-one and yet, I honestly don’t know. I want to believe it’s possible but recent experience tells me America isn’t over its sexism anymore than it’s over its racism. So where do we go from here? I wish I knew.

As a poet I often channel my thoughts and emotions into poetry. Last week was no different, though the words I was writing felt hopeless on the paper. My heart is once again heavy as I try to write my way out of this grief. I want to believe America can change but right now, I’m not feeling hopeful.

“Poetry is about grief. Politics is about the grievance.” ~ Robert Frost