Hex

by Jenni Fagan

As a child I used to give away light like it was nothing. Those without it would fill themselves up with all that good energy like I was an eternal font. The purest light attracts the most impenetrable darkness.

A woman’s voice is a hex. She must learn to exalt men always. If she doesn’t do that, then she is a threat. A demon whore, a witch – so says everyone and the law.

we don’t have to buy into the fears of men, even if they kill us for them.

We try to look bigger than we are sometimes. At other times we have to be smaller than we are. We do other things. Try to take down governments. Make great art. Keep others. Work without anyone noticing what we do for whole lifetimes sometimes. We hold hands. Drink too much or not at all. We traverse boundaries whilst looking ordinary. We give beauty and patience and science and our talent and our hearts and what was once firm in our bodies – we bestow our lives to this world, most often unseen.

There is no man on this earth who didn’t get here except by a woman parting her thighs! We are portals. Humans emerge from our bodies into a world without explanation. Some men hold a brutal kind of grudge for that. They hold hatred in their heart. They fear us – for bringing them out of the Null and into this. They want to kill us because we create their lives from our bodies. What kind of alchemy is that? What kind of a power? Within our flesh, we make flesh.

and laughing, a girl with nobody’s eyes upon you unless they held love.

Power is not something women are allowed to own easily or – often – at all, let alone learn to wield. Not by law! The church says no. Education does not teach what should be taught. Girls learn to shine in secret.

There is not a storm on earth has not come from a woman. The earth and skies and stars and galaxies and light and dark itself are all our mother. It is she who birthed us.

She knew her body was just a temporary, and imperfect, dwelling for her own transient soul.

Silence is complicity. Non-action is a form of approval. I will not be passive.