The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion: Vol. 8

by Beth Brower

I have been sitting atop my tower attempting to distill my many days in this place down to its essence. And am I changed because of it? There is a freedom in my body. It is so very familiar, yet long abandoned for the mandates of adulthood—womanhood, I should say. While I am under no illusions (nor is anyone else of my acquaintance) that I am the ideal execution of what a woman ought to be, I still feel like I’ve tucked my wings against myself too often. Curtailed? Perhaps trimmed? My mother had once said something or other about the necessity of this. But sitting in this high tower, the breeze cooling the sweat on my skin, I have two questions. When is it necessary? When is it not? These long days out of doors feel like coming home to a place to which I’ve always held the key, but was told it should be put away. But, oh! There has been sovereignty of self in this place—of body, of spirit, of the intangible magic which sews the two together. To shout and run. To lie in tall grasses and watch the wind play the sunlight both true and false. To feel the building threat of rain and watch it crash to earth from the tenuous safety beneath a tree rather than from behind a window. I am, I suppose, satiating a long drought. My childhood soul has been left too long abandoned. How do I best find it in London? At times I feel my body has betrayed the girl I was, growing past the lithe limbs hewn in independence. We are to be fit for the purposes of adulthood, I know this. Childhood an...