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104 lines
2.7 KiB
Text
104 lines
2.7 KiB
Text
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Carmine Red
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2022-03-06
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***
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March is Women's History
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Month. Time to sit
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down and reflect on all the shit
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my ancestors went through
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so that I could be
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here today, collapsed in bed,
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distressed,
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wracked with anxiety,
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in desperate need to be exhumed
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from this disintegrating body.
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I'm forgetting my own herstory.
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Past entries in my journals
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are becoming letters from foreign countries,
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the other timelines where I am well,
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doing well,
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not at the bottom of a well.
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The other timelines where I am making things
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of worldwide importance,
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where on my childhood detractors
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I've gotten revenge.
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Not wishing I was a bird
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like those outside that now return
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in preparation for spring.
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It could have been so much worse.
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Straitjacket, locked up, never heard
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from again. Maybe lobotomized.
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How many geniuses have met their demise
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at the hands of a crude scalpel,
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I wonder? And I, here,
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how could I in this day or now convince
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the padded-wall jailers
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that the other soul that resides in me means well?
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"She has dominion over
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every part of me,
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but *noli timere*: I have no desire
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to harm my family."
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Who would lis-
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ten, not lock me up for ten
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days, weeks, months, years
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until I renounced this world within me so dear?
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Tell me, can you hear the screams
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from behind
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tied-
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on masks plastered with smiles
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for the crime
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of omitting domestic servitude from one's dreams?
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Can you feel on your hands the blood spilled
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from God's unwanted "blessing" that might instead kill
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when it comes to term, woman coming to terms
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that the Son who bled with promise to save
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won't give her better than wires with which to lacerate?
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Can you see how bright is
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the future we might have had
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if every woman brilliance
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was not snubbed out at every chance?
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The sheer weight
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is enough to make
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anyone go insane.
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I'm forgetting my own herstory.
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It seems some days
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that things have forever been this way,
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each day bleeding into the next,
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record on repeat.
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The slightest bit of thawing heat
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feels like a bitter attack:
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how dare I be reminded that
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this isn't all I've ever had.
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How dare anything have the audacity to remind
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that one day I won't anymore be able to hide.
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There will come a day when the sky
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breaks and lets in cleansing sunshine.
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And I'll have to look my mother in the face.
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And I'll have to tell her that when I die
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I'm going to a completely different place
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than Heaven or Hell.
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I'm going to remember the hell
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that the men of all history have inflicted
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and make a new world where to be what I am
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is not a sin, not gravely iniquitous.
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And she'll have to confer with Father and decide
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if what I've done
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is grave enough
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to warrant the psych ward's involuntary hold.
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This is my birthright as a female, isn't it?
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The padded room's blistering cold.
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***
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CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 (c) Vane Vander
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