I was born in the white heat of anger, the long shiver of rage, the gall rising in the throat. Not a pretty face but the ripping tug on the bottom lip when little-girl teeth bite down deep into a bitter kiss. Tortured Christ, sinew-tear, joint-shatter as the flesh crumples off the bones like a wax figurine over fire. Born again in a furious word that burns like the scream of a hungry virgin.
You speak to me with the wild abandon of a tirade at a headstone. Pour out secrets with a condescending bite as though I can’t understand them— but, silly girls, blonde hair spilling out of your veils on a dare— I have known hunger and I have known rage and I have known pain. You crowd up to my shuttered window with the illicit curiosity of a groping hand at a glory hole. Perhaps you smell the lemongrass at my wrists. Perhaps you shudder.
Rage, rage, rage, I believe it is rage that makes them scream on Calvary, I believe it is rage and furious love that rips them apart until they are more blood than woman. Every time I taste the bread and wine I feel it. Every time I squat in the corner of the hold to piss I feel it. Hysterics; the dying of the light; the sickening of the womb. Sometimes I feel as though I am a long scream that tears its way out of the mouth like a crowning baby and rattles in the back of the throat. I am a bitter husk of a woman and the long slender hands that cradle my breasts in my dreams are not Christ’s.
What do I do, mother? Why does my husband beat me, mother? Why does my neighbour let his sheep loose on my pasture, mother? Why does He not come for me, mother? Why does he not come for me, mother? Why do my lilies not take root, mother?—
(And the scars? And the drooping pouch of my belly? And the red haze that swims over my eyes in a dizzy miasma? And the things I have hissed into the dark, on this unendurable path of dreams,— via dolorosa, dolorosa, dolorosa. I glare at you with the pure burning hate of a child.)
—I murmur decorous nothings and lay my cool hands on yours.
I have been so quiet for so—
I will scream I will go mad I will tear all my hair out until it fills this prison with great gold and grey clouds I will tear through the parchment with the record of my rage I will live I will eat voraciously gluttonously vengefully I will kiss you hard with all my teeth and burn men with the wild creature in my womb I will paint the sky with my blood I will feel the first new grass under bare feet I will exhale thunderstorms and give birth to new days I will cry oceans I will be a queen I will kill all of you with the pestilence in my blood I will burn you I will,
I will feel the wind on my face yet.