April is sexual assault awareness month
and child sexual abuse awareness month
and national poetry month.
Connecting deeply to all three of these topics, if I ponder too long what thoughts to share in 30 days, now 17, it feels rushed, pressured.
And such is the mental gymnastics and day-to-day living of a person recovering from trauma, which is most if not all of us in this ill society. And so I share these raw thoughts on an unseasonably warm day in April…
Do I share the journals full of private thoughts from 3rd grade to now? How can I get a society that is so based on the degradation of female and Trans and LGBTQ bodies to remotely understand the beginning, middle, and current Self-destructive mechanizations they have created in my mind, in my body? I cannot change this society. I cannot make a big change. I cannot do these things alone.
So I look to Earth, I look to the extraordinary people in my life, I look to the extraordinary people standing up in the world, l read the poets, I pause.
As Audre Lorde implores, what is it that I need to say?
I need to say that our stories are many and varied and often not heard for their essence. They are flaunted in rooms of so-called justice and strewn on newsfeeds to further the agenda of white male supremacy violence. They are entertainment to a 24-hour news cycle, fodder for men in elected houses to feel better and not change, heartstrings to pull for a facade of caring.
Mostly the essence is heard amongst ourselves, amongst us who understand the pain of not knowing how to love our bodies, our brilliant minds, our arms and legs of action. And therein lies the answer? If there is one? Must we move aside the abusers and abuser-sympathizers-who-don’t-know-they-are-sympathizers so they stop? Would they listen then?
The irony of seeing a bright warm day in April in Chicago, flowers budding on buckeye trees, red petals emerging from eastern redbuds, their budding is too soon. Their petals were meant for longer darkness, longer depth in branches of mystery.
Our budding has been too soon, men on pre-teen girls, traffickers on Black and Brown bodies, priests on young boys, and we know it is not real budding of our Selves. It is not born of darkness, it is not birthed in water. It is false flowers for male gaze comfort, for rapid consumption, for death of those who do not fit the tiny white box.
May we bloom where we feel rooted.
May we flower in Our time.
May our Mystery not be manipulated.
May our Bodies be revered.
May we stand in Justice until flowers bloom from Roots.
