You have said a lifetime's worth of, "I love you" in the last ten months I remember that you rarely said it in the twenty-three years When I needed to hear it like my blood needed oxygen What am I to do with your, "I love you" now Now that I cannot love you anymore Oh! My heart still loves you Still wrings drops of hope from itself Hope hanging heavy from tear tracts To be wiped bitterly away Because there is no hope left Hope is just a tether Preventing me from moving on From acknowledging the truth that The third body is dead and has been for a long time Love's hope nearly destroyed me Consumed me My heart will not let me pry this foolish hope from her hands So instead, I have to lock it away In the dark, cold, empty cavity that is my chest Heart unable to comprehend that I do this for our own good It screams and howls in the echoing silence "One last chance!" "One more time!" "Maybe this time! Maybe! Just maybe!" "I love you" manifests no magic here "I love you" will not call forth a miracle for us I still love you, Too But I HAVE to love me, MORE
This is hard shit. That sometimes grabbing that fact by the throat and screaming in its face is necessary from time to time. Sometimes sitting in the shadow of that truth is required when our spirits are tired and our hearts so broken. And when we're done, we rest. We breathe. And we rise and fight some more. Because we're mothers.
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
I plunge my hands Into the dark soil To harvest the fruits Of gratitude into the light It is practical work Grounding work Spiritual work To nourish my soul Drawing upon the root work Already deeply planted I turn my face to the sun
Birthing a new world is painful Shifting a paradigm is tectonic
Daughters, We do not just choose The Bear We are The Bear We are the Wild Mother We are gifted with the power of creation We are skilled in navigating grief We are aligned with the cycles of life
Daughters, We are the builders of community We are the storytellers We are the lore keepers We are the heart and the hearth We are the fire keepers We are the fire
I still hold the smallest flickering flame of hope Smoldering painfully in my belly I keep trying to stomp it out Smother it But it persists Despite the obvious futility of its existence It will not listen to reason Will not extinguish beneath showers of bitter tears I must endure it Ignore it Until it gutters and dies on its own
Speaking one’s truth is an act Of rebellion Of reclaiming Of liberation It is stepping into the light After living in the dark for too long It is my story to tell And I will tell it as part of my healing
Words Wishes and Wisdom 