Of Woman

You ask me to speak of what cannot be spoken.  
You ask me to name what was never meant to be named.

For we have called her many things:  
Witch, when her wisdom frightened us.  
Whore, when our desire turned to shame.  
Mother, when we wished to be held again.  
Lover, when we wished to be undone.  
Wife, when we wished to own what we could never understand.

But she is none of these.  
She is not a title.  
She is not a role.  
She is not a reflection of man’s need or man’s fear.

She is the beginning,  
and she is what remains  
when all things return to dust.

Even our sacred books speak falsely of her
saying she was carved from man,  
as though the sun could rise  
from the light of the candle.

We were not her creators,  
but her echoes.

She is the sea from which all rivers flow.  
She is the soil beneath all nations.  
She is the breath we forget we are breathing.

Do not call her soft,  
for the mountain is soft to the falling snow.  
Do not call her fierce,  
for the fire does not boast, it simply burns.

And do not name her,  
for names are the tools of the builder,  
and she was not built.  
She was always.

Bleeding.  
Birthing.  
Becoming.  
Before words themselves were born.

Do not praise her with the language of possession,  
nor honor her with the silence of guilt.  
Let us instead stand bare before her,  
not to worship,  
but to recognize.

For the divine was never above us.  
It was beside us.  
It walked among us with untended hair,  
and weary hands,  
and a voice that was never asked, only spoken over.

If you would honor her,  
then do not speak her name.  
Live in a way that remembers it.

Then the earth may know peace,  
and the soul of man may finally rest.

For she was not born of us.  
We were born of her.  
And to her,  
we must one day return.