Sitting across from me in a chair,
her spindly legs
cross around one another,
twice.
Once at the knee,
once around the ankles
in that awkward way
that partially distracted me
from my ample troubles.
She looked at me,
quietly processing my last update.
As I dabbed at my right eye
with a palm-moist tissue,
she shifted
and put her pen down
on her notepad.
She broke the stale silence
in her small dimly lit beige office.
“You should list on your resume,
‘grace under fire’ as a skill.”
“Because, truly,
you navigate devastation
so well.”
At the time I took her
professional assessment
as a compliment.
Gold star!
Excellent Job!
Good girl.
You are suffering
in the most ladylike way!
Looking back,
more than a dozen years later,
I wonder:
should I have heeded
her praise as dire warning?
That messaging
may well have caught me
in the crosshairs
of a much longer trap.
Perhaps acquiescing
and silent grief in the shadow
of a looming malevolence
is not the honorable thing.
What I needed in that moment
was someone
to shake my shoulders and say,
“This is not right.
Go. Be safe.”
Protect yourself,
take up space,
find your voice.
Sometimes the right move
is to bear one’s teeth,
to growl,
to defend,
to assert worth,
to claw out of the ditch.
Perhaps rage is essential.
Endurance suffering
should not be awarded.
Swallowing distress
is not a long distance
Olympic sport.
Despite the practice,
and the miles,
there’s no medal
nor podium.
The hollowness
and shrinking
that comes from years
of being ground down
should be identified
as the trauma it is.
And yet,
here I am,
still grim and prim
under the flames.
The root cause
of this anguish
should be flushed
from the system
as urgently
as caustic acids
splashed in the eye
in organic chemistry lab,
which is to say
Immediately,
thoroughly,
and with support.
Women,
the original vessel,
of life,
of strife.
We know too much,
we hold too much.
While we've become
so comfortable
sitting serenely
in the fire,
perhaps we should
let
it
burn.
