She's Feral On Purpose

we pinky swear on it

A regular sized woman, you say? A woman who curbs her hunger, daintily pushes the plate away before she’s had more than a few bites. “Oh, so stuffed!” she exclaims and everyone smiles pleasantly at her tiny little appetite.

An ideal woman, you say? A woman who holds her tongue and perfectly positions her feet to point away from the line. Polite and friendly, moral and righteous, modest and self sacrificing. She quietly makes all of this world possible and gets a little pat on the tush as a reward.

A godly woman, you say? A woman who raises only one hand when the worship music tugs against shame, sways beautifully from the third row (she doesn’t need the attention of a first row, of course). She closes her eyes, parts perfectly painted, soft pink lips to pour a wretched soul out onto the floor. “A woman of value,” they say.

Women whose names fit in the curl of patriarchy’s slobbering tongue, who never demand too much in return.

Women whose eardrums throb with their own silence, whose hands slick with the sweat of what goes unsaid, whose hips clench around the truth and squeeze til there’s nothing left but a slight, trembling gasp.

Believe or not, even those women can’t escape their truest nature. Serpentine spines wrestle beneath carefully covered skin. Full moon dreams reek of the-body-of-true-nature buried below church floors. Somewhere inside them Inanna keens for what’s hers.

I remember a time when I thought my only option was to be one of those women. I can’t remember anything then but the image of a good woman - one who willingly offered herself up as prey and made it a point to praise the beast that hunted her. And then, of course, there was the day it nearly killed me, split me in a dozen green, fatal cracks. There were weeds pouring from my ribs, my cheeks, my thighs, my neck. A slight glint of scales growing over rigid vertebrae, a mad scramble to cover it all up. And I was 24 hours from becoming a corpse tucked below the pulpit. I imagine someone out there still has my eulogy memorized.