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SANCTUARY
i'm
suffering from
job burn out
today.
the
pay
is shitty, the
hours are unending
and i'm overworked since
these days every time i walk down
the street there's a woman being hurt. later,
these women somehow get directions and show
up in my head, ringing the buzzer, crawling through
the window when i don't answer and waiting in line
to be written into a poem, for words to give them impermeable,
permanent bodies. right now, there are too many to count, hundreds, maybe
even thousands, shuffling their feet, waiting in line, their hands knotting
and unknotting in their laps, nursing their children, blowing their noses,
waiting. why didn't i take that job writing about wild strawberries and
childhood like my mother wanted? there is another woman here, too, bound to
me by genetics and memory. in another country, she hunts killers in women's
blood and writes to me in light: after the diagnosis, what then? then the
word neither of us can say. from different sides of the globe, we dig at the
tight knots of history until our hands are raw and still we cannot make
unkill a word and all the women we cannot save. there is always work. the
women in my head are growing restless, pulling at the crime scenes of their
bodies, wrestling with the police line tape that binds them together like
memory or genetics. i stick my fingers in my mouth and blow, a whistle so
loud it is heard on pages five continents away. their searchlight eyes widen
as i tell them: ladies, i have had enough. today, we're going to do it
differently. i'll tell you what. grab a beer from the fridge. turn on the
radio too loud, open the window and dance. inflate the body bags into
balloons and set them free into the sky. put on a party hat. remember how to
laugh until your throat hurts. tell me a story that ends "and they lived
happily ever after" because this is your poem and it's a party and nothing
bad will happen to you here. when everything else has fallen apart, this
will still stand; this is your memorial, your sanctuary, your legacy. come
on in.
stay forever.
welcome.
- Daphne Gottlieb