Juliet Takes a Breath

by Gabby Rivera

What did painting women as untrustworthy or whorish have to do with God’s love anyway? Those stories weren’t even about women directly. They were stories about men in which women had side roles as the mother or the second wife or the daughter-for-sale.

Maybe America just swallowed all of us, including our histories, and spat out whatever it wanted us to remember in the form of something flashy, cinematic, and full of catchy songs. And the rest of us, without that firsthand knowledge of civil unrest and political acts of disobedience, just inhaled what they gave us.

“Your one job is to just accept what a person feels comfortable sharing about themselves. No one owes you info on their gender, body parts, or sexuality.”