Thursday, December 20, 2018

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

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