Divinity Erupting

 Illustration by Scout Mayo

My body is a temple of fool’s gold, ornamented with masterpieces of my children’s making, which are hastily taped or glue-stuck in place or pinned with vivid thumb tacks or held up by faith.  There are pillars of crayons, bright and happy, wax-sturdy in their paper sheaths.  There are wreaths of dandelions, full and yellow, bursting with sunshine and wishes soon blown.  This temple has altars of Legos, all order and balance, and a ceiling of glow-in-the-dark plastic stars.  Its pews are benchmarks and milestones, lined with pearls of wisdom and white lost teeth.  My rituals are Chutes and Ladders and Candyland and cops and robbers and Sam-I-am.  My vestments are my children.  They hang heavy.  I am adorned.

I am adored.

Here, worth is weighed in dinosaurs, velociraptor prized more than apatosaur.  I worship mess; it is my blessing.  I like residing here.  There’s always coffee; there’s usually beer.  I dress to the almost nines, sweats atop my alabaster thighs, my priestess hoodie donned for times of bus- and bread-making.  I sacrifice sleep and drinks with friends and time for me… for time for them.  I tithe with soccer balls and pirate swords and rocks collected and tug-o-war.  I meditate on slime and Play-doh and St. Elmo’s face. I ruminate on mud and sticks and Queen Anne’s lace; I reflect on the prismatic promises of rainbows and the roll-with-it way of the Roly-Poly.

I light the lamps of cellulite, my beauty blubber shining bright.  My blood flows as a river, ruby, its current garnet, its tide tourmaline.  My funny bone is tickled ivory, a piano playing silly songs.  I am a chandelier of DNA, a hematite helix wound tightly ‘round my honeyed spine, with an amber heart that glows softly in her rib-gilded cage, beating a molasses tempo, slow and steady, lava and light.  Heart is my strongest organ, unyielding in her sinewy song; she plucks my strings while sister Tongue plays second fiddle, but only when Tongue so desires.  Heart is distant, constant thunder; Tongue is instantly sonorous. She revels in cacophony. Her rascality plays into my power. She lassos nos and holds them close to catapult backtalk when I need it the most. But even so, and even then, Tongue’s slings and arrows are the byproduct of men.  Her shots across the bow are borne of guilt and shame; they are slung pearls before hot and bothered swine.

No Solomon sits on his wisdom throne here, looking smart.   This is my realm.  My space.  My treasures.  My sanctuary.  Approach my inner sanctum, if you dare.  Darker things live there.  It houses a Pandora’s box which shelters sacred secrets and shuttered words long swallowed.  Open it at your peril.  You shall unleash the Unseating of ancient seeded archetypes and the willful hexing of outdated troglodytes.  There are vows that will shut whetted appetites; there are powerful spells that shriek, “Down with eye fuckery and silent violations!”  This harpy speaks.  This harpy bears grudges; this harpy bears down.  She is ill will walking and no beast of burden and she relishes screeching and making a scene.

Hear her scream:

I am much more than meets the eye, blonde beauty more than baldly beholden.  I am more than apple of, more than candy.

I am the goddess of whoa, man.  I am the holy whole, man.  I am a black hole, man.  I take up space.  I take down space.  I eat space.

Oh, you thought I knew my place?

I am an earthquake.  I am seismic.  I am not afraid.  I will serve your irate face on a silver tectonic plate.  I will shatter your glass ceilings and use their shards for stepping stones.

I am not so solitary as a pawn to be moved.  I am not so loyal as a knight.  I knit chain link and fling it far, a fishing net of rosary armor, my quest to find an absolving of sins: a hailing of Marys for a jousting with hims.  I am not so careful as a king, meticulously shifting single squares: a sitting duck, so laissez-faire.  I am not so rigid as a rook.  I have no use for by-the-book choreography; I move diagonally; I change fate. I am a fucking queen. I am supreme.

So go ahead and:

Call me Shrew.  I could bury you.  This is the un-taming and I will run wild.

Call me Bitch.  I am a rabid feminist, a dogged defender of all victims, bitten.  I am not a good girl.

Call me Snowflake.  I will multiply.

We are an avalanche of packed fire and ice and there’s a reason it’s called freezer burn.

Call us Pussy Cats.  Oh, you want to play?  Okay.  We are grasshopper mice; we howl at your hoots and hollers.  We eat your sweet and sexist infection, inhaling your venom, exhaling our perfection.  We are our own immunity, and we drip your chauvinistic death.

Stop.  There is no more time to waste.  There is no season safe to hibernate.  This is the Awakening, rising hot and fast.  This is the ripe price of misogyny.  We move as one towards autonomy and we are all done with your

“Smile, sweetie!”
NO.

I won’t.

I need to grab these few things from Target and pick up my kids, and then I’m going to vote.

 My body is a temple of fool’s gold, and my vestments are my children.  They hang heavy.  I am adorned.

I am adored.