liberation

Dear one, dear one
hush now
your mother's burden
is not yours to bear
your load is light
hush now
you cannot ask
for less

Hush now, child
stop your nettling
we don't need your voice
we need your body

Quiet, baby
don't make a peep
you have so much
already

Sleep, sweet.
Sleep deep in twilight
fevered dreams
silly fears
There's no one here
but us.
No one will hurt you
but us.

free

We're so much better off today than yesterday. Yesterday we were property, bartered and traded. Yesterday we were beaten to death, we were bred like cattle. Today they've granted us our humanity. Could we ask for more?

We're so much better off today than yesterday. We can seek out torturers and butchers to rid us of the rape's seed. Crippled for life is still alive. Could we ask for more?

We're so much better off today than yesterday. Yesterday we were denied cesareans because they were birth control. Today is a much better day. How could we ask for more when others have endured so much?

Today we have the right to influence our husband's vote.

Today we have the right to work outside the home.

Today we have the right to equal pay, though no one pays attention. Today we can vote for ourselves and are allowed ownership. What is it we would ever want? Why are we not grateful for progress? For modernity? Our rights so graciously granted?

Today they drug us and violate us without consent. Today they abuse us and call it care. Today they hire men simply for their lack of a life-giving belly. Today they dismiss us as unstable because we're as human as they. Today they let us fight, and rape us for the fun of it; cast aside as insane for speaking the truth.

But why should we ask for more? We're liberated. So shut the fuck up.

good intentions

Being the spouse of a depressed person who is unable to find a job is a very difficult place to be. When telling someone about the problem, they immediately ask for what he's done or not done, where he has and has not applied and give me their opinion on what my husband "needs" to do. I appreciate the desire to help, but they are not helping. I am not my husband and I can send in an application here or there, but I am not picking up his phone, I am not scheduling interviews and I am not the one interviewing or following up. I have little to no control over his situation and I really wish people would meet ME there. I wish they would treat me as someone who cannot fix his problems because they're just adding to my burdens when they don't.

In testing walkie talkies for emergency evacuation & general communication around our workplace:

"I just think that's overkill."
-coworker who keeps loaded guns in drawers scattered throughout their home

The prejudice of love

“If it seems to you that you have understood the divine scriptures, or any part of them, in such a way that by this understanding you do not build up this twin love of God and neighbor, then you have not understood them” (De Doctrina 1:36:40)

Postmodernity is a necessary corrective to the idolatry of human knowledge. We can use it to deconstruct modernity, but then move past it back to a premodern respect for God’s mystery.