by Laura Gail
Come sister. Let us remove heart’s armoring and sit for a moment. No more sideways cutting glares of “back off bitch, the man is mine,” or careful calculation of one another’s weight and wages. You are not the blade, hungry to cut me for my man, my job, or home. And my un-lying skin and slender thighs make you neither ugly nor worthless. Let us cease the mindless chant of fat, stupid, ugly, which we try to silence by shining it outward like a lighthouse beam onto women around us. Let us smash the noisy lens, pick up the pieces, hold them to the sun, letting light split apart in jagged edges and shatter what kills you. Know that in women our cure lies within the poison. Healers and witches hid in church convents covering wild wisdom under nuns’ wimples. This is how we have survived through burning and binding. So come, sister. Sit with me awhile in this tent of red. Let us place that which we slice ourselves upon here on the table that we may find a cure.
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