Still it catches me

June 29, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

Contributed by a reader

64 years old and still it catches me
in those moments when I don’t hold tight.
Floods my mind – the long straight road in the high desert, the
unexpected words on the radio.
Another young woman missing back home.
Her name spoken.
My friend.

Two days of fear, hoping, anger, retracing,
and then

They found her on a mountain slope
cut apart
her head placed high
each breast mounted on a rock below
separated by the dry chaparral of late summer
each arm, hip, leg
spread down towards the sea.
Unfathomable violence
hurled at the pieces of her body.

64 years old and still it catches me
in those moments when I don’t hold tight.
Walking to third grade just past the carob tree
the cadaverine odor full in my senses.
Those boys, eight years old, jumping from behind a bush,
thrusting in my face
that picture of a naked obese woman
legs spread
camera zoomed on her labia.
“Hey bitch, what d’ya think of this!”

64 years old and still it catches me
Story after story
Every woman
Every place in the world
Linked together
In a world full of horrors.

Again, tonight.
Listening to Sunsara tell of a woman
too afraid to join her
the stories crammed in boxes deep inside
stacked carefully and held tight.
Fearing that to open them
she would fall apart.

If there were no other way
No possibility of change
Nothing to hope for
Nothing to imagine
Those moments that catch you would
        consume
                 destroy
                          soul.

But we ask
“Were things always this way?”
“How can they be different?”
We imagine, learn, fight for a world where
violence against women
violence against dark skinned people
violence against immigrants
violence against all oppressed
exist only in history books.
Here, those moments that still catch us are fuel
for fury,
for a mighty force for revolution,
for an emancipation unfathomable and unknowable

until now.