Eleanor Rigby was the perfect woman.
She picked up the rice in a church where a wedding had been.
She was idealized action.
Only her mannerisms and scribbles are remembered in a song.
Eleanor Rigby became a woman by name and nothing else.
Little traits she found from novels or the back of generational recipes,
Eleanor picked them up and made them her own.
Reduced to a town character, 
she found identity in what the people around her wanted.
When we infantilize our women to the point where 
they become the actions they take,
the clothes they wear,
the habits they pick up,
they become the hardened bits of rice they once loved,
no one left to gather it all up now.

Do you think,
every time she pulled that mask out of its jar every morning
and stepped outside, 
she wanted to?

It was for us,
not a self-reassurance that love might be around the corner.
Eleanor Rigby was alone like most people,
buried in her thoughts only to finally release them the day she died.