day SEVEN HUNDRED

Hellfire

Where do you keep it?

Is it between your ribs?

Under your tongue?

Is it lodged between your eyes

like a gift from the goddesses

that can see through all of this shit?

Every woman carries a piece of hellfire with them.

A hot lick of flame

one that we are told to tamp down and control

one we are even afraid of,

the thing that will turn us into the Phoenix.

every day women and girls wake up to this truth

this knowledge that no one wants to say:

that men

(including the men that they love)

are the greatest

threat

in our

lives

That is the white hot lick of the flame

that burns inside us,

the anger that fuels us.

It is in all of us.

Through the loss and the pain,

through the burnt cracked betrayal

this anger like a fire waiting for fuel

lit by the impossible pain of our history

lit by the knowledge

that every day someone tried

to kill us

tried to string us up

tried to burn us

tried to beat us

or run us down with cars

tried to control our bodies

and our lives

and dictate the spaces in which we were allowed to be.

Tried to rape us.

Yes there is a hellfire in every woman you see,

burning like a beacon,

like a call to the goddesses,

like a prayer to the

half-hung witch that survived.

There is a fire inside us.

We know it and nurture it.

We pet it and love it and stoke it late at night.

It is our anger. Our truest selves.

And now,

you know it too.

--Ally Malinenko