I think what I hoped is that the sun would fall out of the sky,
instead of slip into the horizon the way it does so compliantly each day.
I hoped it would hang there some sunset, suspended, the
complacent edge of the earth turning to receive it in its
dutiful way, but that then, as everyone watched, it would crash,
shattering into sharp bits, spilling its bright orange blood over
the water, the hills, the cities, over those who stood there watching.
Instead they've sent me away.
They think they can shut me up. They think that once I'm here
I'm gone. Fathers will now honor their wives, children obey
their parents, no one will touch themselves down there, now
that I'm gone. I think that's what they think. They think
their children are safe.
Their children are not safe. Love and lust and the oblivion to
harm on their behalf are not put away like a pathetic woman in a prison.
I really haven't much to defend myself. They
want my scars; they want to flay me alive. I offer nothing,
not my love and not my losses. That is perhaps my mystery, but what
they do not know is my misery: Really, I can no more explain than they can.
In fact I know very few things: the agony of birth and the relief of forgetting.
The bliss of those few moments believing it all makes sense.
Of course I didn't take their help. Haven't we all been helped
by the best of them? Fathers teach their daughters everything
they want them to know: it does not matter what you do if
you do not do what I ask. I am sick to death of all the good
fathers out there. Is it any wonder I look to a boy? He is not,
after all, my son. I know the difference. You fools out there
argue there is none, but you're wrong. You're the same ones
who want your daughters to be good girls.
I am not good. I am your worst nightmare. What will happen
if the mothers forsake their children? What is happening
while they stay? Go home, all of you, to your well-constructed little
lives. You have no more answers than I do. Love your little
boys and girls. Teach them how to be good fathers and mothers,
just like you.
Just don't be surprised at the headlines.