On the Savage Side

by Tiffany McDaniel

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?”

What’s a john? “A man who takes things.” What has he taken?

“You have to keep a corner of yourself hidden from all that cruelty.”

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

We humans have always been in pain. History tells us that in the artifacts civilizations have left behind. Pain is there in the broken vases, the fractured poetry, the overwhelming music we have played for centuries. We belong to grief until the engine goes out. Then we belong to the dirt, our bodies identical to other fallen things.

It was lived on the savage side, and it can be said that no heart is safe on the savage side. But I’d like to say something more. I’d like to say that on the savage side, there was love. Love for us, love from us, love between us. We mattered, but no one will much think of that before thinking we were just addicts and prostitutes and weak-minded women who are easily gotten rid of and even easier forgotten.