The Book of Longings

by Sue Monk Kidd

Unlike my mother, unlike every woman I knew, my aunt was educated. Her mind was an immense feral country that spilled its borders. She trespassed everywhere.

The act itself of writing evoked powers, often divine, but sometimes unstable, that entered the letters and sent a mysterious animating force rippling through the ink.

“All right, all right. There’s a copy of Plato’s Symposium there. In it he wrote that his old mentor Socrates was taught philosophy by a woman. Her name was Diotima.” Seeing my eyes grow wide, she said, “And, there’s a badly stained copy of Epitaphios written by a female named Aspasia. She was the teacher of Pericles.”

“Oh, but the real treasure is a copy of a hymn, the ‘Exaltation of Inanna.’ It came to us from Sumeria.”

I tell you, there are times when words are so glad to be set free they laugh out loud and prance across their tablets and inside their scrolls. So it was with the words I wrote. They reveled till dawn.

I pulled her head to my shoulder and smoothed her hair. I had nothing to offer her but my willingness to sit there while she endured her pain.

“I’m more concerned with what’s in your heart than what’s in your bowl.”

“Lord our God, hear my prayer, the prayer of my heart.” Looking up, he held my gaze a moment before continuing. “Bless the largeness inside me, no matter how I fear it. Bless my reed pens and my inks. Bless the words I write. May they be beautiful in your sight. May they be visible to eyes not yet born. When I am dust, sing these words over my bones: she was a voice.”