Marie Curie in a Post-Feminist World

back then
she was probably the only woman she knew
at the time who was a scientist; everyone
knew she was an oddball, a six sigma, out there.
there were no assurances that the world was
her oyster, or that what she was doing was normal,
whatever that may mean, so she probably just
got down to work and figured her life was a
lonely one in the lab and that’s that.
No one told her any different.
If she were here today, working alone
in her laboratory, the only woman scientist
in this post-feminist world, she would have
to wonder why she is alone after sharing the
lab bench with her girlfriends during her early college years.
each of them dropping away with murmurs of
not being good enough, not understanding
well enough, and she would have to watch
them all fall away and stand there by herself
and wonder what is so great about this
post-feminist world.
They told her it would be different.

image courtesy of www.life.com