Tuesday 18 June 2024

'Woman, Resplendent' by Julia Ruth Smith

What if she gets to the fork in the road and thinks fuck it and keeps on going, through the gorse and the pain, with her basket filled with the sweetest jam from all the times she bled like a good girl and she dips in her fingers and smears it on the trunks of barren trees so she’ll know her way back home? 

What if the blood brings boys prowling with sharp thoughts and feelings for this woman with fat on her thighs? What if they see how disheveled she is with her greying roots, platinum memories and twigs and berries splattered like broken capillaries on the flushed cheeks of a hot day and they’re the ones who’re frightened, because here’s a woman who stares into the face of the wolf and twists the lies right out of his scrawny throat; here’s a woman who doesn’t care if she’s the fairest in the realm and needs no woodcutter to save her because she’s taken the mirror and smashed it into pieces?

What if they call her a witch, a hag, a crazy dyke and she lets out a guttural cry because sticks and stones and all that crap, when she know in her heart she’s more than their pitiful manhood put together and she tears down the castle, where the prince admits he was wrong because she’s fine, as fine as the thin queen who glitters in gold but is no company at all on the dark nights of winter?

What if she stands on the castle walls, fluttering emblem in hand and looks out over her kingdom? What if nature salutes her, blows a brave trumpet and the sky cracks open with starlight? What if she smiles? What if she comes through resplendent?

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