Artwork: Reaching for the End by Will Jacques
Someday, Severance
Rachel Birchley
the stir/as I read her
words/a slow swivel/inside churns/my silence
screams
yes this, o this! She
knows of/scratched scars sewn
on our/shared skin, the stitches
stretched open/ when we remember
that our/skin was & is/a currency sold in shops/soiled/in
schools & shamed
on
streets/blood on sheets (as
if we) were/flayed meat strung
on hooks/sanded/down and smoothed/by seizing
fingers/ scolding
tongues.
She spoke/the words we
never could/instead we swallowed
(because
The Rules said we had to) suppress
our voices compress/our
bodies & shrink
so we/found ways/to repress soften
scorches & ways to soothe singed skin
& suffocate/burnt throats small
stabs/of air in the slowest/smother
& never/ever summon/the siren-call nor
evoke the
Suspiria.
Fine-honed over/ epochs we sustained & set our
switches/quietly to simmer
we taught/our daughters to
do the same
repeat & repeal recede
In retelling/her story/she shouts
&
sings spits
& spews all/the
contents/of ourselves/we purged/so that we/could exist
in/some strained conformity (as our foremothers did). Now
we might
serenade!
her scripture etched
into stone a memorial
to
all those before (&
after) us
& seal
it with spilled blood & cement our
splintered/bones & scarred/sinew. She
speaks
the
messy truths/of our coiled/ histories
to all the sightless
eyes & shuttered ears/ soldered
tongues; sculpting
the promise of
a future/the possibility of severance.
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