Mary: An Awakening of Terror

by Nat Cassidy

Men like you have taught me I’m so unimportant my whole life that sometimes even I don’t try to understand what I do.

I don’t call them beautiful. It’s not that they’re not beautiful—my God, they are—but that word has too much baggage. It’s an outsider’s word and it was weaponized to render these women invisible in the first place. They are full of so much more than beauty. I tell them they’re amazing. Powerful. I tell them they’re here.