Women!
Do not center your lives around men
Pleasing
Appeasing
We are not the prey for their predator
Though some argue nature made it so

We are Medusa's progeny
Serving oleander sweet tea
And Aqua Tofana cocktails
We carry the legacies of Lilith
Hecate and the Morrigan
Skywoman and Diana of the Hunt
In our bones

We are born with cunning woven into our shadows
Placed there by the midwives and wise-women
Kitchen witches and herbalists
Shaman and priestesses
Who came before us

We have our own form of politics
Whispered around washing wells and sewing circles
Book clubs and coffee tables
We don our poison rings and hat pins
Let them think our docility safe
While we keenly observe and note and remember

It is time to end the war waged upon our bodies
The raping of our spirit
The subjugation of our gender
We are the gateway of life
We break ourselves open through blood and pain
To do the Goddess's work of creation

Too long have we allowed the world to think us 
Weak
Helpless
Foolish
Simple
Incapable
We must remind the world of our strength

Boudicca was beaten and her daughters raped
And in her rage she waged war against Rome
Joan d'Arc stood against the English and the Church
A God-touched, heretic, peasant child whose heart would not burn
Harriet Tubman survived the travesties of slavery
Another God-touched woman who delivered 70 other souls to freedom
And we know there are so many more like them

Though we may not find our names etched in history
We are no less powerful than those who are
Our lives are OUR CHOICE
We are not chattel nor trophies
We are creation gifted autonomy
It is our divine right to wield our lives as we see fit

Let them vilify us as
Succubi
Mad women
Uppity bitches
And cunts

We know we are
Goddesses
Priestesses
Witches
And warriors

We are exhausted
We are fed up
We are wrathful 
The Divine Feminine rises
The world is set ablaze around us
But we are not tied to the pyre
We choose to look the world dead in the eye
And dance while it burns

-gws