On the Savage Side

by Tiffany McDaniel

All the roads here are not graveled in rock, girls, but with the woman’s scars, because only a woman’s scars are strong enough to bear something driving over them, again and again.”

“A witch is not a pointy hat or a broom or warts. A witch is merely a woman who is punished for being wiser than a man. That’s why they burned her. They tried to burn away her power because a woman who says more than she’s supposed to say, and does more than she’s supposed to do, is a woman they’ll try to silence and destroy. But there are some things that not even fire can destroy. One of those things is the strength of a woman. Don’t you want to be a woman like that? A woman with power?”

Creation ends the way it begins. With hunger.

Who do you tell about the demons when the demons are the ones who you tell?

You can’t go up without going down. Heraclitus said that. But what does a man know?”

Her is a blur. She is who we were.

“Most of the girls out here,” she said, “have their own spiders and wolfs and rabid dogs. If only we could begin again. Start over with our virginity and make a rule on how it’s devoured.”

“An unraveling fire?” I asked. “It’s when flames remember how to be free,” she said. “And remember that they used to be women.”