Just Turn On the Light

We frozen women
bury our cold dead
in the night
shivering and alone,
the wolf howls above us,
we cry in solitude
and our tears turn to snow.

But what if we turned on a lantern?
What if we saw in the distance
a flash of a skirt,
a glint of a shovel,
heard a sigh of a tear.

We are not alone,
my wailing women.
We carry so much:
our pain,
our rejection,
our slut shame,
our body shame,
our queer shame,
our betrayals,
our scars,
our blood and bruises all over our bodies,
our rapes by friends and strangers,
our assaults by coworkers and passersby,
our catcalls and obscenities thrown our way

What if we turn all the lights on
in the goddamn house
and realize we are not alone at all.
We are all there in the same room,
standing together, strong.
Not a single woman must
bury her wounds alone,
our grievances and pain
do not have to be buried by ourselves,
but in fact together we can fucking raise the dead,
just with our voices,
loud and raging out
into the night sky,
so loud that the moon shakes
with our vibrations and stompings of Earth.
We are the night.

Photo Credit: Natalia Medd Flickr via Compfight cc