An Excerpt from Girl-god

To dear god, 

My bones were always bathed in the Feminine rage that was the all consuming urge to 

destroy, 

punch 

and scream; 

but never acting on it, plagued with the knowledge that someone must clean it up. And that person is you. Or someone else who has been cursed a Woman too. 

I thought I could never lose control, for I would have to clean up the mess — but now I know my mess is holy and something to be worshipped. So I let go, and allow myself to become this righteous dogma. 

For reasons that pertain to my place in this world, 

I am singing, 

screaming, 

pleading this to make it known, 

for reasons wretched and divine — I will be leaving this mortal mind behind. Is it a sin? Am I dirty now that I have stopped lying… to myself, to you? Never will I repent to a cruel and jealous god — for my life is now mine. 

My evil, my beauty, my eulogies, and my prayers. 

I may etch them atop your words in the red inking blood of your son. I am angry, and I am tortured, but I am not crazy. A heretic in the name of myself and all things. 

Girl. 

Will you read my scrolls in the next life? Will you plead for my forgiveness? For my mercy? Only time shall tell, and I will now tell you… 

I am not scared to be replaced; 

I do not claim this throne for myself. It belongs to the 

Girl 

and there will be many after me. My Daughters, my Mothers, my Sisters. My Girls. 

Each a slice of the pie 

you felt the need to finger with dirtied hands, pouring straight rot. 

Our pie may be dirty, but yours is too. 

For we have all come from a Mother, a bloodied womb. 

Red clots of pathological pleasers and antithetical daydreams. 

But when you thought my Girls were being battered, and bruised, and used, and ruined. 

They were being baptised. 

For a 

Girl 

is not baptised in the weeks following a hospital birth, Her Mother 

standing at the altar, her underwear stained red… 

and her ‘husband stitch’ itching. 

A 

Girl 

is baptised many times, painfully. 

The first: when a man looks at Her with hunger, long before She could ever feast Herself. 

The second: when She wakes drenched in blood and Her Mother congratulates Her with remorseful tears that tell the story of Her own first bleed. 

The third: when a boy she loved becomes a man. 

The fourth; 

the fifth; 

the sixth; 

and hundreds after that…

A 

Girl 

is constantly baptised under scrutiny and trial; each time She comes out purer than before. She may look dirty to you, but to me She glistens in Her tears, and now knows how to kill. 

How to grieve. 

How to glare. 

How to snarl with sharp fangs, 

then turn to smile with them moments later. 

My Girls know how to live and die… 

to sing and make. 

My Girls know what it is to be god 

and now you will never 

forget. 

For I am not god in the shape of a 

Girl, 

I have been god all along. 

He has tried to mirror my image time and time again, but he has always murdered them in a boy-like rage. 

“I thought you were so beautiful and so strong and so much fairer minded than I.

Why are you like this now? 

Why did you defy me? 

Why are you what I made you?” 

Yet this time I am immune to your floods and your plagues. Throw upon me your wrath and watch me rise from the flames, watch me sew my wounds with my teeth and 

watch me take your throne. 

For I was made in the whispers of those who didn’t make it. They spoke my strength into existence through the tears of their own. They did not build me up to be quiet. They did not build me up to sit and listen. They did not build me up to be knocked down. 

They built me for greatness. 

They built me for the whip of my words, for the slice of my intellect, for my ability to silence those who have only been taught to speak over others. No, I was not born to be yours. 

I was born to be mine. 

As I grew, your words wrapped around me like vines. Persuading me, taunting me, convincing me to poke and prod at the body that holds me. 

But now, I say no. I shall not. Nor will I silence the thoughts that question yours. Never will I doubt the power I have been given. 

I will bite the hand that feeds me, I will snap at the hand which tries to conceal me. I am not yours. I am not a pretty pedestal, never a stepping stool. 

I will not be behind you or beneath you. I will be beside you: pushing, pulling, prancing. Not in silence, not in question, but in determination. Determined to be passionate, young, old, beautiful, ugly, loud, loving, cunning, running… 

Running barefoot on a slab of burning 

coals. Persevering through each blister, only looking down to appreciate the feet which move me. I am not just my father’s Daughter, not a product made to be bought. 

For in old age I will look upwards and upwards. Not a flash of my life will dare to enter my vision, but the passion and strength of my word fills me. 

A distant memory. 

One which was never yours, and maybe never even mine. But… it was there. One which may surprise whoever has seen it. Yet, this was never my memory to tell. 

Maybe it shall be found beneath the sky, in the wind, beside the moon and intertwined with the sun. 

As my figure now rests on this throne, 

I know I am the god of my dreams.