by Elizabeth Gade
You are bound by nothing. Not by the jelly fished blood clots orbiting the toilet bowl, undulating and otherworldly. Not these badly knitted bones or rotting gut or knives rusted shut. I shall rise again. Red witch of womb and wound that married. I am bound by nothing. Not by my lovers or mother. Not by the aborted or the birthed. Not even of this Earth. Not by rapes or desecration. Not by the pillared fists of pimps or predator or embodied trauma. I shall rise again. Red witch of poems and incantations, cursed and cursing. She is bound by nothing. Not even tongue or pen or the seduction of revenge. Not by solar plexus driven fists. Not by hunter or hunted, both of which I’ve been; following bloodied footprints down darkening paths. Red witch of rotting wood and crumbling bone, bound by nothing. Moon disc mouthed I shall rise again; hell fresh and feasting. The red witch. She has risen.