Hex

by Jenni Fagan

learn not to have those around you drink your energy.

I have learnt the hard way.

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 l...

It is all spectacle. Weddings, births, hangings.

There is a bloodlust in humans.

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.

your skin is so thin it seems precarious that it holds your blood and bones and organs and heart and soul.

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.

I helped women birth, I helped calves, I knew how to pick the right herbs to cure a headache, and I had a terrible want in me to go out at night and see the stars.

Tall stories only make tall churches. Not reality.

Men want to know how they got trapped on earth. Don’t they? It’s an issue. What does each one of them see when he turns

around to work it out? He se...

There is no man on this earth who didn’t get here except by a woman p...

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. Whilst we are reading books, working, fighting, sitting on the bus, we form atria, blood, lungs, legs, nails, hair, eyes, ears.

We bear pain. We bear loss. We serve a customer coffee when we are feeling anxious and achy and dead tired on our ...

So existence is explainable by – what? Devils and gods?

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 ...

The earth and skies and stars and galaxies and light and dark itself are all our mother. It is she who birthed us.

It is a plague. A thought plague. How many people in this world will be killed by thought plagues?

They create nothing but fear and death. They take ordinary people to an early grave, or just scare them as they try to live out their days.

Iris said the darkest is always drawn to the brightest – they search it out even in their sleep.

I wonder which of those women up early in the wee hours this morning with their Bibles come to see me hang so they can go home happy?

Gave a very, very small smile. Not enough to seem like I had ever been happy. Kept my eyes down. Curtsied! My nails were very, very clean. I have always been polite. I’m not a stupid girl. I know to say yes when I am asked to do a thing, only yes and thank you and of course and I’d be glad to and please allow me! I’m sorry. I say I’m sorry. I turn sideways in a hallway to let someone pass and press myself flat so they can get enough room to ride a bloody horse past and I say I am sorry. I must be sorry, therefore I am. Those were my allocated words, given at birth, pinned on my crib so I’d know.

Did you know crows never forget a face? They can escort you over to the other side.

Because every stone laid since Adam watched Lilith leave Eden has been with the sole intent of him never being shamed by a woman again. Ever since the first of days, woman was told she was here solely to serve and obey, to bend and twist, to hide the sharp tip of her tongue. God help her if she is a mirror. If she reflects back at them what they are without even trying.

We learnt to tell our stories only when the men were gone.

We are just women with power and skills and an innate knowledge. That’s what makes us scary. Who are we? We are many.

Simple things, and no magic in them.

he sought to dull my skin and weaken my heart (where the soul resides) so I would better know my level of nothing.