They met at midday Mothers Daughters Sisters Friends Then the keening started One voice Then five Then all of them Screaming with balled fists Until the rage and grief Became breath itself Heads thrown back Hands holding hands Tears streaming and teeth bared No words They had exhausted words Words were ignored The harm was always buried Deep beneath silence Indifference Choked out by misogyny Patriarchy State sanctioned predators Who never faced accountability For the harm they caused But made sure women were punished For talking about the harm Or defending against the harm One in five Likely more Every woman knows someone If not in their own reflection School Book club Work All women know the entitlement of men Now they were done Done grieving In showers In cars In closets Alone So they came In every town and every city In every country To be seen To be heard To create a sound so deafening The Goddess woke Their rage and grief a clarion Heralding it was time for someone else To finally be afraid
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
Black walls splashed with red light Black pedestals shoot up from the floor Every odd stalagmite topped with dark tributes Each a void A violent event horizon Containing a blackness so deep The minimal luminescence of the room Feels blinding by comparison
Like calls to like The black hole I hold The emptiness that inhabits the center of me Demands it’s recompense Otherworldly hunger crawls up my throat Forcing my chest to expand as I open wide my jaw I inhale deeply Tears stream The void within me begins to consume Every point of absence in the room
Monuments yield their hollow prizes to me Each devouring punctuated by a scream Inhale a void Exhale a scream Until there are only walls Red light And echoing screams
You gave me scars deep below my skin So I keyed this poem into your car A parting gift A reminder of the damage you've caused Easier to repair than what you did to me
Born deep inside of me
A glowing ember begging to ignite
To storm, snap, and snarl
A crimson shadow sharpening its claws
Scarlet eyes stalking opportunity
A monster lurking just below restraint
Whispering dark pleas for release
Begging for me to drop its chains
So its primal fires can erupt
And burn down the world
Howling triumphantly at the joy of destruction
-gws
Voices rose in sharp keening
The dry grass caught
And the world began to burn
Ancestors' voices whispered in their ears
As they focused their rage into a reckoning
-gws
I was tasked to write out my feelings regarding someone who was one of the biggest adversarial people in my whole life. The exercise designed to help me relinquish and release my long held rage and resentment. I wrote seven and a half pages. I ran out of words. But I didn't run out of rage.
I have carried molten, violent, unfulfilled rage toward this person for at least a decade. This person is dead, and yet I still hold a belly full of rage. Raw, ragged, bitter, acidic rage.
It consumes such resources with its existence. I have carried this wicked ember for so long that despite the fact that it no longer serves a purpose, I don't know how to release it or extinguish it. It is a companion I have grown too used to despite despising that it exists at all. I also cannot help but wonder how life will feel without the burn I've become so used to.
I feel it sitting like a silent scream, desperate to wrack my body in ragged convulsions of hot tears and roaring sobs. I feel that if I were to relinquish my hold on it, the rage would wring me dry, and maybe consume me outright. It feels like once the bottle is uncorked and the demon released, its force, alone, will use me up in a blinding, all-encompassing, soul-fire blaze.
Will I survive it? What will be left of me? What lies beneath it? What will take the place it leaves empty and desolate? Will I be the same when it's done with me?
gws
