She once gave me a raft of hand-me down clothes.
Of good quality, and competent craftsmanship
But off somehow
I tried to alter them
To make them
Something a young woman could find comfort in
But this has never been a story about
Young women finding comfort
From what is cast off and
given away
you float for a time in the “even so,” casually, miraculously, inexorably growing limbs and features and organs, that all-important beating heart. No one tells you meanwhile in “Houston…we have a problem” or that the problem is something you cannot (would not)
unmake you
/girlness /not boyness, your binary /identification /of /gender
Will be enough to terminate the mission
… when all along you have done your best in the beautiful floating weeks of the “even so”
You matchless irreplaceable girl-in-the-now, girl-for-a-moment
Until mission control
Aborts, aborts
Letting you
tiny dancer, rocket girl
Go.
In deep winter
she chooses to suspend
All the ordinary chores
Drags a heavy fishing net to the belly
of this man-made stream
Feet first into
cold deep
Swims upstream
where they wait for her
bobbing on the water
snagged by the naked
limbs of winter branches
An old oil can, adorned with red duct tape,
several empty beer bottles,
torn flotational device,
And a veritable tableau of shirts and trousers
Snagged on naked limbs
then animated by the wind
Once carefully extricated
she lines the children up by year, gender, alleged disability
Names them back to life
So they can indeed
Fly, flock of winter birds
to inauguration.
preoccupied
with the ghosts of children,
She
hammers nails into the wall
for improbable angels
they float above
small, intricate, perfect
real girls
each flicker just a moment then
Snuffed out
Because they were not…
Because they were not…
born boys.
I told you
This was a two-part answer
Ironically framed
By the disembodied voice
Selling cars in the next room
It’s like calling
A cathedral
A room with four walls
And a ceiling
Huh…
I think as I finish
Stuffing variegated laundry
Into the high efficiency machine
That is true
You my darling
Are no mere room
With four walls and a ceiling
You are a cathedral
And should be treated as such
Tear down this temple
And I will raise it again in three
Days
He said
Evoking all
The foundations in the womb
Baby pictures and toothy grins
Girls whose smiles light up the room
Do not be content to be
Measured the way a man will
Span an ordinary room
Know instead
It takes a lifetime and a fortune
To raise the extraordinary
Cathedral
Flying buttresses
Stained glass windows
Columns and impossible
Arches
All to the altar
Rising incense
Gaze of the Infinite
God
girl you got
Wings down your spine
Silvery feathers
An anthem in your head
Sing it, Girl–
Sing loud
Whole world to hear
Percuss.
heart a bird caged in bones
Use it all to
Question every undisputed
Law mitigating the force
Of gravity and light
With your full-throated
Iridescent flight
Rise up
Rise.
late at night
I search for something to cover
My fear
A wedding dress? day-glo body-paint?
Or Marilyn Monroe
‘s iconic white shift
When truth is all you really
Need
A body is
Mostly just water-
River wide and shimmering in the sun
Deep muddy current
Run all the way
to the infinite
Sea
I read MEW’s screed about abortion today. It was a difficult read.
As a self-identified pro-life “wing nut” who actually believes that all life is precious, I found her unapologetic stance painful and tragic.
Ms. William’s candor and vitriol were difficult for me to read….because she reveals the selfishness and myopia at the heart of the abortion-on-demand movement. Make no mistake, abortion is a money industry, just like guns or drugs. But to aggressively insist that mother’s have an unfettered right to kill their own offspring at will? Her words reveal the desperate lack of value placed on the lives of the very young.
No society is civilized when it drops it’s protective force for the young and vulnerable. We are now a society that registers horror over the natural predatory nature of cats but congratulates itself on the termination of wee humans.
When children are openly treated as objects by their own mothers we are all lost at sea.
…our hearts as empty as our words.
A giant multinational furniture company decides to erase images of modestly attired women to appease Saudi Arabian autocracy. And where is the outcry from women all over the world?
Feminism is dead. If not dead, useless, if this egregious act of dehumanizing women produces no response from us.
I went to the company website to protest and was directed to ask “Annie” a question.
I won’t be surprised if she doesn’t answer. She has probably been erased.
For a long time my name was Bitch. I will only write it once, hereafter I will use a placeholder, but it is important for me to acknowledge it just once.
My adopted daughter called me this regularly for years. Never without venom. It hurt to be called beach because of the venom. It hurt because she was saying I was not human, without value.
I suspected that my new nickname, like much of her other abusive behavior, was a reflection of her own struggles with identity. She said I was the beach, but struggled with who she was and how valuable she was.
She was valuable to me. I had sacrificed a great deal to be her beach, um… mom.
She is still valuable to me. I know she can be a pain in the grass, but she is my daughter. She is my daughter.
When someone treats her badly or dehumanizes her or devalues her. And let us be clear, those words themselves are placeholders for very bad things. People who should help her have done very bad things instead. Well, I may be a beach, but I want to stomp and yell and kick’em in the shins.
I want to say stop!! She is worth more than this!! She is my daughter.
I want to have a healing, undoing, potion for the harm done to her.
I do. It is a single name–Jesus. He became the beach for her, for me, for all of us to undo the undoable, to restore our lost and stolen value.
When she tells me what has happened to her I grieve and wish she would stop running from the one Man who raises the value of an ordinary beach like me.
He buys the field/finds the treasure/sets the captive free.
And instead of the rude name we have become accustomed to, He cups our faces in His hands and calls us by our eternal name–
Dear
Very Dear…
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