Save Herself
It was a story
I heard,
how women
throughout
history
who were
unable to create their art
started to
rearrange the furniture
in their
homes.
It made me
laugh at first,
what a strange
thing to do,
to move a
couch or an end table.
To pull the
heavy weight of the television set
across the
room.
To shift the
angle
and the ease
and the
viewpoint
over and over
again
because you
cannot put your heart into this world.
I think of my
mother.
I’m sure you
are now thinking of yours
and wondering
if there is some truth to this claim.
Some sad
kernel that goes beyond
the anonymity
of women’s work
the anonymity
of women’s art
something that
speaks to a larger
more feral
pain
a witchy sort
of anger
something she
does when the men are not around
so they come
home to this change
that she alone
invoked
and conjured
up
like a spell,
a house that
is a prison
a domesticity
that is a trap
women’s work
as shackles
so instead we
have
a woman
rearranging her space
in order to
rearrange her mind
in order to
save herself.
--Ally Malinenko
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