“Female” is a verb these days.
An action word.
An indicator of unrest,
of constant and necessary motion.
Rote behaviors have become revolutionary acts:
waking up in the morning,
making coffee,
buttering toast.
All tiny protests.
A quiet persistent resistance.
Each moonrise a soft
sweet
victory.
Lavender:
fragrant,
fateful,
when you walk through the door.
Lavender that blossoms from the thin, small space between your skin and your sinuses,
that chuckles as it
floats across the room and
curls itself around my ankles,
my thighs,
my collarbones,
planting itself,
finally,
in my body's identical delicate space:
flashes of lilac,
of amethyst,
of orchid, of maroon.
My vision is filtered,
starry and
celestial.
I want
more,
I want mauve,
I want periwinkle,
pomegranate,
magenta.
And I want you,
my constant reminder to
color outside the lines.
Oh, the RAGE I feel over this. The foggy post-traumatic haze that I've been swimming through for the past few days, buried so deep in my being that I COULDN'T FIGURE OUT WHY I COULDN'T STOP CRYING. The brave beautiful women who CONTINUE to step forward. The stories that make my hands shake, that make my mind race and my heart pound out of my chest and tell me I'm not safe,
not safe,
not safe,
and all I can do is squeeze my eyes shut and wait for the storm to pass.
not safe,
not safe,
not safe,
ringing in my ears even as I lie, safe and loved as I could possibly be next to my husband in bed at night. Because nighttime has been the hardest for me for the twelve years that this elephant has sat on my chest. Because nighttime is when I'm vulnerable and quiet and defenseless against the technicolor wave of memory that washes over me and leaves me shaking or
sobbing or
sweating or
squeezing the pillow so tight my fingers start to cramp or
screaming because my heart is splintered into the millions of tiny pieces that my sisters help me carry as they share their stories,
their scars,
their strength:
my sisters the statistics,
my sisters the silenced,
my sisters the survivors.
We'll let the light in through the cracks. We'll lean on each other. We'll quietly continue turning lead into gold. We'll be soft and gentle and patient with our bodies as they rile against this news, these men, the monster-in-chief. We'll persist,
nevertheless.
I have this rage that sits in my belly like a popcorn kernel,
small,
round,
vibrating.
Every time I turn on the news, I gasp for breath and open my mouth,
accidentally feeding it,
hot oil swirling down my throat,
growing the seed and
growing the seed
until it pops,
and exists in its new form, three times its original size.
It aches, it itches, it
multiplies, until I have a collection of them, a
veritable cineplex's worth of foreign objects
taking up space in my system,
my stomach,
my body,
which is hardly even mine these days.
These days, when I'm fragmented and
micromanaged by a broken system and
so
fucking
furious,
anger seeping through my veins like
poison.
A belly full of sodium,
a meal I didn't ask for,
force-fed to the point of bursting.