Anne. Please, says Lisa. Write about this. It’s sickening.
“This” is a media darling’s stunning fall from grace, to a bearpit of the righteous and wounded.
My dear loyal Lisa, who knits gorgeous circle scarves with the recipient’s face in mind as she works, who believes go big or go home (why else to explain the giant banner given to my daughter after she won an award at school…a banner Lisa told me she hoped my kid would hang in her bedroom so it was the first thing she saw when she opened her eyes in the morning), I have only this.
Women have never stopped collecting firewood as they march.
We pass structures but we don’t venture in. The system has holes, we can tell, so we’ll build our own networks, our book clubs, our cubby mates, our coffee clutch, a sisterhood of sad eyes and chuckle-belly giggles long after the kids are in bed.
We smile at the men who walk with us, sharing the gin and the joke, those brave, wise, sweet and funny, those shaking our hands across the boardroom table. Pot bellied or lithe, hairy or stripped, speckled or smooth, sinewy, smelly-god love them and the warmth they create under the covers.
I feel for us all.
There’s a wall, I can see, an ugly, festering pile of rot. Perverse creatures mewl and preen, extending slimy fingers through the gaps to bring bright-eyed fawns over to the shadows when the sun goes down.
Fog swirls, it’s hard to see, to understand what shape is on the other side. Up and down the wall, high fives and cat calls and Red Rover, Red Rover, send Blondie over.
Blondie has an ax. She uses it to chop firewood and her arms are no longer twigs. Her sisters in the tribe have strong backs, as does she. They’ve been whipped but only the shoulder tilt gives it away-they’re still tall when they stand.
A wind is coming, a gale sure to challenge the fissures, if not the smouldering fires.
Blondie isn’t worried. The cat callers will be cowed when they spot her ax. A good storm might just clear out the rot.
1 Comment
This is great. “A storm like no other”. It is surely a gathering storm. Batten down the hatches.
Thanks Anne. Keep ’em coming!
Janet