I fly with your song of sea and crickets. I fly and kiss your face of clear and empty sky. My wings expand to the limits of that horizon where the shores of death timidly touch the gentle surf of the ancestral mystery, prehistoric and eternal, that rumbles and lies pregnant and asleep beyond the mind; dreaming with shores, valleys, and plains in conscious little worlds playing at existences and awakenings.
To all the women who are posting “me too”:
I stand with you.
I wanted to say, “me too.”
But it is not the same.
Yes, I too have been a target.
As a child, I could have said “me too.”
Instead, I wanted to be strong.
Pretend it never happened.
Explain it didn’t affect me.
Insist I was strong.
Still, I won’t say “me too.”
As a child I could have.
But I never had to live with it.
My life was not inundated with it,
day after day.
The emotional overwhelm of a couple of years
has been the every breath of so many
of my sisters, my mothers, my friends, my daughters, my lovers.
I felt I’d drown once.
As impotent as I felt then,
it can’t compare.
You battle each moment,
each relationship,
not only to overcome.
To thrive.
I can’t say, “me too.”
I can say, “I stand with you.”
I will fight at your side,
against this toxin that pretends
this is normal and expected.
With you, I say no more
to this false masculinity,
out there in the world
and in here, in this old mind.
I stand with you.
I will fight at your side.
