Terri

Because she was clamped
in the vise of herself,
because she was numb,
because words moved slowly as glaciers,
because they flowed from her mouth like wine,
because she was angry
and knotted her hair
and wore sand in her bra,
because she had written herself into a corner,
and could not get out,
because she had painted the sun on her ceiling
and then got burned,
because she invented the stars
and watched them fall.....
There is nothing to say now
You have filled her grave
with your theories,
her eyes with your sights.
You have picked her bones clean
as ancestor bones.
They could not gleam whiter.
But she is gone.
She is grass you have trod on.
She is dust you have blown away.
She sits in her book like an aphid
small and white.
She is patient.
When you're silent
she'll crawl out.....

I curse myself
for being born.... a woman.

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