mirror of
https://codeberg.org/lethe/mayvaneday-mu
synced 2024-11-22 10:00:59 +01:00
104 lines
2.7 KiB
Text
104 lines
2.7 KiB
Text
|
Carmine Red
|
||
|
|
2022-03-06
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
***
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
March is Women's History
|
||
|
|
Month. Time to sit
|
||
|
|
down and reflect on all the shit
|
||
|
|
my ancestors went through
|
||
|
|
so that I could be
|
||
|
|
here today, collapsed in bed,
|
||
|
|
distressed,
|
||
|
|
wracked with anxiety,
|
||
|
|
in desperate need to be exhumed
|
||
|
|
from this disintegrating body.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
I'm forgetting my own herstory.
|
||
|
|
Past entries in my journals
|
||
|
|
are becoming letters from foreign countries,
|
||
|
|
the other timelines where I am well,
|
||
|
|
doing well,
|
||
|
|
not at the bottom of a well.
|
||
|
|
The other timelines where I am making things
|
||
|
|
of worldwide importance,
|
||
|
|
where on my childhood detractors
|
||
|
|
I've gotten revenge.
|
||
|
|
Not wishing I was a bird
|
||
|
|
like those outside that now return
|
||
|
|
in preparation for spring.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
It could have been so much worse.
|
||
|
|
Straitjacket, locked up, never heard
|
||
|
|
from again. Maybe lobotomized.
|
||
|
|
How many geniuses have met their demise
|
||
|
|
at the hands of a crude scalpel,
|
||
|
|
I wonder? And I, here,
|
||
|
|
how could I in this day or now convince
|
||
|
|
the padded-wall jailers
|
||
|
|
that the other soul that resides in me means well?
|
||
|
|
"She has dominion over
|
||
|
|
every part of me,
|
||
|
|
but *noli timere*: I have no desire
|
||
|
|
to harm my family."
|
||
|
|
Who would lis-
|
||
|
|
ten, not lock me up for ten
|
||
|
|
days, weeks, months, years
|
||
|
|
until I renounced this world within me so dear?
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
Tell me, can you hear the screams
|
||
|
|
from behind
|
||
|
|
tied-
|
||
|
|
on masks plastered with smiles
|
||
|
|
for the crime
|
||
|
|
of omitting domestic servitude from one's dreams?
|
||
|
|
Can you feel on your hands the blood spilled
|
||
|
|
from God's unwanted "blessing" that might instead kill
|
||
|
|
when it comes to term, woman coming to terms
|
||
|
|
that the Son who bled with promise to save
|
||
|
|
won't give her better than wires with which to lacerate?
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
Can you see how bright is
|
||
|
|
the future we might have had
|
||
|
|
if every woman brilliance
|
||
|
|
was not snubbed out at every chance?
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
The sheer weight
|
||
|
|
is enough to make
|
||
|
|
anyone go insane.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
I'm forgetting my own herstory.
|
||
|
|
It seems some days
|
||
|
|
that things have forever been this way,
|
||
|
|
each day bleeding into the next,
|
||
|
|
record on repeat.
|
||
|
|
The slightest bit of thawing heat
|
||
|
|
feels like a bitter attack:
|
||
|
|
how dare I be reminded that
|
||
|
|
this isn't all I've ever had.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
How dare anything have the audacity to remind
|
||
|
|
that one day I won't anymore be able to hide.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
There will come a day when the sky
|
||
|
|
breaks and lets in cleansing sunshine.
|
||
|
|
And I'll have to look my mother in the face.
|
||
|
|
And I'll have to tell her that when I die
|
||
|
|
I'm going to a completely different place
|
||
|
|
than Heaven or Hell.
|
||
|
|
I'm going to remember the hell
|
||
|
|
that the men of all history have inflicted
|
||
|
|
and make a new world where to be what I am
|
||
|
|
is not a sin, not gravely iniquitous.
|
||
|
|
And she'll have to confer with Father and decide
|
||
|
|
if what I've done
|
||
|
|
is grave enough
|
||
|
|
to warrant the psych ward's involuntary hold.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
This is my birthright as a female, isn't it?
|
||
|
|
The padded room's blistering cold.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
***
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 (c) Vane Vander
|