‘read’ lips: gutted. a short apologia.

Gutted. A short apologia. April 27, 2019 Shimah Easter For: Genre: Urban Arts

In an effort to teach him how to love her properly she’d expose his wound at least twice a day.  Run a clean hand gently across it.  Take sterile water – water she’d boiled and let cool on the same stove she made dinner on every night.  She’d take that water and pour it down the wound.  Always down.  So that any infection would be wicked away – from the heart, past his man-parts, down toward his lower extremities.  Each stitch soaked in sterility then dried with a clean cloth.  White.  Always white.  Old folks (from the country) know the dangers of dye on a healing wound.  He would wince when she scraped the pus.  And she would lift her head to reassure him that this pain was for his own good.  Then back to the wound she went.  Placing a special concoction of cloves and turmeric and aloe flesh and raw honey from top to bottom.  You could smell him from the front door.  He had become one with a gummy, saccharine healing that burned.  His boys (my uncles) will tell you, “daddy still smells of sweet sticky earth and the insides of my mamma’s cabinets”.  Such a substantial contusion – from the top of his groin allllllll the way up past his navel, just below his sternum.  She hadn’t killed him; she hadn’t meant to.  What she had meant to do was make him ooze from his guts.  From that place where everyone’s intuition lives.  That place that tells us love this one, head further north and don’t stop ’til you see home…’til you see safe…’til you see free…’til you see love.  Head north – like from guts to heart to head.  Head.  North.  ‘Til you see your own front door.  She’d made earth in her own belly and let sun shine into a dark place; watered the soil with her own tears and grew eight boys and one girl for him.  They were all born breathing.  What the world did to the two who died could never be traced back to her womb.  Was it wrong for her to want to see what grew in his belly?  To want to see how his offering compared to hers?  A woman’s love is so literal – so see-able.  It grows legs and a beating heart.  It walks the earth but never before pulling up.  Not before crawling.  She just wanted to help him along.  Like a classical C-section incision.  Wanted to see what he could give birth to.  But there was only blood, and wood paired with sharp steel and a scream and a… “are you fucking crazy?!”.  Maybe she was crazy.  Crazy is as crazy does.  And crazy stays even when your husband is making like with the babysitter.  Crazy is all that’s left when you’ve given your skin and hair follicles to dryness. Crazy brews and runs over when your biggest boy asks, “mamma, can I have the big piece of chicken tonight? You know daddy ain’t coming home” and you let the bird go cold in empty anticipation. It’s crazy funny…slap-of-the-knee funny (but not really) when you come from women who gut men like fish, then stay to mend their wounds.

2019 has taught me how to occupy my feminine space.  Period.  Shortly put, I think that the push towards equality between & amongst male and female energies…movements such as women’s liberation, feminism, suffrage, etc. missed the mark in a very major way.  All of this is putting it lightly…while rummaging in dark spaces.  We were taught as women (especially as black women) that we could have it all – and thus expected to do it all; that men were mainly the enemy you sleep beside; that this woman’s work was less than and therefore…easily done.  We were taught that a full-time job was just as important to maintain as the sacred space of hearth and home.  We were taught that if you can’t manage it all then there’s something wrong with you.  We were taught to shut up and smile in an even deadlier sphere of ‘cross the damn board.  Many of us were put out (of our very own sacred space) …  Put out of bodies that were meant to sustain us, in an effort to be fed (and mostly fed to) elsewhere.  When here is where it is…where it’s always been.  Here is where life grows, love takes huge gulps of water & air, where roots are planted so that they may make good use of the ground we’ve been blessed with.  This is the divine feminine space we’ve been taught to sprint from, ignore even.  It’s been an anywhere but here mindset; so much so, many women know only how to work from masculine energy – playing dress-up every day because, well, we also live in a society that simply doesn’t care if your breasts are too large to fit under lab coats, hips too wide to squeeze between 9-5, thighs too thick to run corporations that do not know your maiden name.  Our energy is one that knows how to push, indeed.  But when working from masculine verve, a conditioning took place.  Instead of the expected features of ancestors past bleeding through, we came to the realization that we were birthing things resembling nothing even remotely familiar.  Herein lies the disconnect 2019 aimed to first shine a blinding light on…and eventually mend.  The mending hurt.  The mending was for our own good – cod liver oil on a 100-year-old silver spoon.  2019 was the thief in the night sent by Divinity herself – took bags upon bags away from wearied shoulders so that she might have more room for herself.  We woke up and all our shit was gone but we did not die.  Your breath remained, your blood still flowed, your equilibrium eventually caught up.  And after realizing that you were after-all still intact, still whole…you felt lighter!  2019 stripped away all that was stripping you; your higher self finally met you eye to eye and said, “you are beautiful naked”.  2020 will be a blushed-face femme replying, “thank you” and asking for her apron.  It’s nice to be naked, yes.  But she’s got some cooking to do (and bacon grease burns like hell when it pops up outta that cast-iron skillet).  2020 will be a rubbing down of the patriarchy after a long day’s work in a way that does not emasculate or undermine a genuine purpose, even though it went far left.  2020 will be the kitchen of grandmother’s house – built by granddaddy’s strong hands…but still (and forever) known as Grandma’s House.  2020 is feminine energy beginning to take her space back…because it feels good.  Because it is good.  Because it is divine…and when momma’s happy…

Just a lil tidbit for you to carry around in your pocket and know it’s there: 2020 breaks down / adds up to the number 4. A sacred number indeed, as there are 4 elements (fire, water, earth, air), 4 directions (north, south, east, west), and four equal sides creates a square with no weak points. Though it is considered a masculine number, (when considering the overall feel of 2020) I want you to bear in mind JayZ’s 4:44 – a creative endeavor indelibly not possible without the strong feminine aspects of his wife, lesbian mother and daughter…who all did their own unique part in rounding out his edges just a bit. Go 4ourth (double or nothin’ – make it gr8)!