Maggie Waller

we are being silenced again, lilith
rights revoked and mouths covered
a young girl from a small rural town who is forced to carry to term
while they crown her rapist ‘daddy’
an expectant mother whose ectopic pregnancy is forced to decay inside her body because its
removal would be a felony
more so than her own murder by the medical industrial complex
a doctor fearing for his license over his patient’s life

we are lost, again, lilith
show us the way

they claim evil and point fingers at you,
but i know you did your best
i know you tried to make something out of nothing
i know you tried to save it all

created from the same soil as adam
his complementary opposite
his equal

born into paradise
you knew early on what you wanted to create in this world
you knew that music and dance and fellowship and love were the only way
you knew that his incessant need to categorize and divide and weaponize would lead to our
destruction

he should have listened to you
he should have listened

lilith, you fought for our pleasure
refused sex solely from beneath the weight of a man’s expectations and ego
refused the role of submission

eyes open to your world and a world beyond
you were a danger to the hierarchies man was trying to create
so they destroyed you
quickly, quietly
and crafted a narrative of you that would be easily consumed by the human mind

an angry, evil woman
the most easily understood and hastily accepted narrative in history

they banished you from the garden and sent you to earth

where gravity and weight work a little bit differently
where moving your own body through space took ten times the strength you were used to
where every step was a fight
where every breath was a fight
but you did it
you put your body on the line
for us

i know how brave you had to be to try and come back
to attempt to spread your knowledge
to attempt to open eve’s eyes
i know you were the snake in the tree
and that your request was not out of temptation or seduction or malice
but love

their world would crumble if she ate the fruit
their kind of world would never survive if our eyes were truly opened

i know how badly you wanted to be a mother
on your own terms
i know how much it all must have hurt

they could never persuade me to fear you
for how could i fear that which is also myself?

how could i fear a woman alive, full of agency
carving and claiming her space in her world
seeking pleasure?

when i know that pleasure is a birthright
when i know that the body is not an apology
when i know that there is no room for shame here

lilith, you are a sacred reminder when i forget my own power
the power to both build and to destroy

you remind us of the time when women healed the world with their bodies
when sacred sexuality and sensuality were embraced as natural and necessary
when soldiers came home bruised and weak from battle to find healing first in a woman’s touch

you remind us of the time when we weren’t afraid of ourselves or each other
of bodies
of touch

before it was all demonized
before we deemed it dirty
before we created the word ‘sin’

when they tell me that you are a symbol of uncontrolled female sexuality,
i ask myself when that became something we needed to control

and when they try to villainize you by cloaking you in darkness,
i ask myself when we learned to fear the unknown

you are our mother
holding us
guiding us to freedom

when light blesses me each morning
i channel you first
for i know that god is not some distant entity
but is within the flesh and blood and womb of a woman
in our ability to create something from nothing
in our capacity for rebirth

in our cycles

like a python shedding its skin each month
like a woman bleeding
we experience death and destruction and healing and renewal like clockwork
understanding that in order for the kundalini coiled serpent dormant at the bottom of our spine
to revitalize our system, it must first be awoken
understanding that some things must end for others to begin

understanding that
chaos is not a bad word
but something necessary for transformation

did you know that pythons are non-venomous
constricting and suffocating its prey before swallowing them whole
knowing that venom is the easy way out
knowing that with venom you don’t have to experience the pain of death with your victim
don’t have to empathize with their hurt
but pythons stay until the end

with an amazing ability to hold their breath
unsurprising to all of us who have been holding our breath for generations
pythons can detect body heat

using their own senses and deep intuition to guide them to safety and help them survive

these nocturnal, solitary creatures
like all of us women
can blend in with their environment as protection
can sustain themselves
can hold community amidst it all

a python is not an evil thing
a python is a thing trying to survive

i have realized something, lilith

they hate you because you remind them of who they could be
of the freedom they so deeply crave and yearn for

you make them see what they must first free within themselves
to build the world they say they want

it is not pleasant
but growth never is

expansion, transformation, the tearing down of old patterns and the rebuilding of new ones
catalyzes tension
necessitates friction
and asks us to release

you ask us to release

if you hide inside the dark,
you will soon become it

and so you ask us to confront the dark within
to embrace all that we were taught to be ashamed of
so we may truly be liberated

i rebel with you
i protest with you
i scream with you
i refuse with you
i demand with you
i fight with you by my side
i see you in all of us women who dare to be nasty

in medusa
in hecate
in kali
in morgana
in nyx
in joan of arc
in harriet tubman
in the mirabal sisters
in marie curie
in frida kahlo
in rosa parks
in ruth bader ginsburg
in alexandra ocasio-cortez
in greta thunberg
in malala yousafzai
in every mother in gaza, sudan, the congo
in her
and her
and her
and me
and us

why must i search so hard to find your true story?
why must i search so hard to find my own?

lilith, we refuse to stop fighting
we are links in a continuous chain
with you as our strength

we know anything is possible
we know our power
we know our voice

we know what we must do
and we know you will be there
every step
every breath

we owe you everything
and we love you
and we need you now.