by Nikita Gill
‘Man up’ is that villain who shows up with lackeys
‘grow a pair’ and ‘boys don’t cry’ uninvited to parties.
We tell our sons stories about heroes like Hercules,
but forget to mention how Hercules’ rage
caused him to murder his entire family.
And by telling them stories where anger becomes
the only acceptable way they can express themselves,
we are teaching them shouting, punching, yelling
is all they can ever do to release themselves from hell.
And this is how cursed phrases
like ‘man up’ contribute
to the greatest killer of men under 45.
Repression leads to depression,
depression leads to trying to find ways to be alive
and after years of being told not to feel,
the only way to truly feel it all becomes suicide.
We have created nooses with words
and watch passively as our sons tighten them
around each other’s necks.
So I will tell my son, I will say, Cry,
let the dam burst, and let the rivers you are holding back run free.
It will release everything that hurts you
and finally you will be able to breathe.
The definition of who you are as a man is too powerful
to be swayed by a phrase,
it doesn’t have to be proven through self-hate.
When they tell you to ‘man up’
look them in the eyes and just say, ‘I will not, no.’
Become the earth, the rebellion your heart
needs for your love of yourself to grow.
Devour Your Monsters
The world is not allowed to make a meal of you, girl.
It is there for your consuming. First, you devour and spit out the bones of the men who try to turn you into a punching bag. Second, you eat the kings that try to lock you up as gifts for princes. Then you spit out the bones of princes who try to turn you into a good, docile, faithful little wife. Then you reject every person who chides you about your obligations and your duties to men before your duties and responsibilities to yourself.
And then you open up those castle doors and walk alone into your beautifully crafted sunset.
In Absentia: A Common Curse
Absent fathers still raise daughters.
They just raise them to be prey.
They raise them to obey.
They raise them to wither
in front of every man
that gives them even
an inkling of the love
they never received
from their father.
Of Kings and Queens
Did you think they did it alone?
Built whole armies,
and conquered thrones?
Constructed promised lands
that would outlive the sun
resurrected prosperity from ash and bone?
A family crest is not just a manmade thing
it is also created by generations of women
who wield swords through guile and letters.
Show me your kings,
and I will show you the queens that willed them
that bred them, that taught them to be better.
Svengali Girl
(After Simon Says)
Svengali girl says, ‘You can’t wear white, it makes you look fat.’
So we all wear black whilst she wears white.
Svengali girl says, ‘We aren’t talking to the new girl, she’s weird.’
So we hurt this girl who did no wrong but is brand new to old ways.
Svengali girl says, ‘If you are poor, you can’t hang out with us.’
So we all start putting value on saving face rather than on who we are.
Svengali girl says, ‘I know you like him, but he’s out of your league.’
And we obediently stop liking him so she can date him.
Svengali girl says, ‘Those shorts are too small for you.’
And we watch her buy them for herself instead.
Svengali girl says ‘You’d be pretty if you had nicer eyes.’ And we
learn to look at the ground when talking.
Svengali girl is hurt when you call her cruel.
She tells you she’s the only one who cares about you.
She quietly threatens she will break you.
She whispers rumours to hold you hostage.
Who says women are too soft
to know how to be vicious?
We can do the most violent things
to each other whilst making hardly a sound.
The Ogre
They asked the gentle ogre
who refused to attack children
who guided lost travellers on nights
when the moonlight failed them
who no villager could bring
even their fickle hearts to fear,
‘What makes you tender?
What makes you so kind?’
And she asked them in return,
‘Is there any other way to be?’
They told her about her ilk
and their particular breed of cruelty.
She smiled. ‘My nature has always
been stronger than my nurture,
because my nurture failed to make me
the fiend my kind wanted me to be.
Kindness is not blood-borne,
it is how you teach yourself to be.’
Mothers and Daughters
She will not always be compassionate.
Sometimes the brush will pull your hair
too hard on purpose when running through it.
Sometimes her voice will be loud, so incensed
your palms will turn clammy, icy with fear.
Sometimes her mouth will twist
into something not a smile, not benevolence.
And she will be all the things
that you thought only stepmothers can be.
Her pain received no outlet.
Her injuries healed wrong,
and she had to drink her own wounds
to continue to exist,
no one ever taught her
she would have to do this.
So she does her best to keep the beast
in her own belly at bay
—be good, be kind, be wise all day,
there is no room for her pain, but at the end of it all
we all forget she is only human.
Forgive her for how her agony
reveals itself, child.
This is how blood magic works.
Unconditional never
meant perfect anyway.
In the Old Days
Everyone around me is complaining
about the divorce rate these days
and I am thanking the Gods that we have options now.
People forget this part;
our great-grandmothers had no choice.
They fixed what was broken because they had to.
They carried whole marriages on their backs alone,
used their own trauma for glue,
because where else could they go?
So they wiped their tears whilst preparing food,
nourishing others with love they craved themselves,
built their fortitude out of seeing others happy.
They had no means to save themselves
when they were taught that that was
what their Prince Charming was supposed to do.
In the Old Days II
In older days, women learned to listen without listening—a skill most women learned through inheritance, as their husbands explained away their infidelity. To cope, grandmothers taught their daughters and granddaughters a thousand things, amongst them where Lazarus went when he died, and how to get there too, just without dying. It’s a magic trick you must learn when he betrays you, they said, and he will betray
you, he is a man, we expect this from our men because men are like smoke, easy to breathe in but hurtful on the way out, easy to carry away in the wind. Women have always given each other weapons in words, in advice, ways to survive in silence, ways not to break, ways to endure everything, yet somehow we are the weaker sex.
This is the trick they were all taught: close your eyes, love him silently (he is still your husband, like it or not, this is home now, even with its rotting foundation) but now you must love him through clenched fists, half-moons pressed into your palms, a full moon in your mind. The first lie he speaks should bring you to the fields, the second should send you dancing through the meadows, the third should remind you how to get here because this will happen again, betrayal is made of repetition.
So women taught each other it is better to tear yourself into parts, send parts of yourself away forever into Elysian fields in the sky eternally, eat all of the sky to cover your pain because you are not allowed to live without him, how will you with no education, no prospects, raise your children?
Better learn magic tricks rooted in betrayal.
Drink poison every day and not die.
Cut yourself in half instead of showing him your pain.
Pull a whole new you out of a top hat every time.
And now for your next act,
drink the poison he gives you,
and make it look damned good.
How You Save Yourself
Understand this first:
No one is coming to catch you.
That misery belongs to you first,
and no one else wants any part in that.
Might as well start breaking your way out of your tower.
Might as well trick the vines to help you.
Might as well turn your own hair into a ladder.
Turn yourself into a rope and find your way
Down, down into the aspen grove,
the trees have always been your friends.
More than tower walls or saviours ever were.
If you ask them kindly enough,
I’m sure they will receive you happily.
If you are lucky,
you may even suddenly find your wings instead.
You will never know until, like Icarus, you risk the fall.
Nothing Soft About It
I am still learning
how hope is sometimes
a dark thing disguised
as a bluebird
and how some bluebirds
never come back home.
Motherly Advice
Mother says, ‘Do not text boys
that look at you like you are a feast.
Girls are not feasts.
You do not give yourself
up like a perishable thing
when you have miles
of growing eternity within you.’
Mother says, ‘Be careful of strangers.
Especially sweet-looking old ladies
because you never know
what may come to you in disguise,
bearing poisoned apples.’
Mother says, ‘Do not trust girls
with fox eyes and too-clever smiles.
They carry spells between their teeth
and they use them so cleverly,
you won’t even remember
how you lost things to them.’
Mother says, ‘Do not go into
the quiet copses,
do not visit castles,
do not seek out secrets.
You could become vanished smoke.’
Mother says, ‘I raised you better than that.’
And I think of
the sins I already belong to,
all the secrets I already know.
I am already fertile with
the forest and the fog,
my mind pregnant with all the things
she wishes I didn’t know.
Skeletons in the Garden
See these fields all littered with
decay, with bodies covered in seasons.
See this earth, all damaged and cold,
broken for all of the same, bitter reasons.
You warned them of the folly,
sent letters saying they would meet their end.
Yet they would not stop appearing
by the armies at dawn over the horizon.
They kept sending princes to save you
who would never ever come back
because they could never understand
that you had befriended the dragon.
The Shapeshifter
You think I am made of lore and sugar
easy clay for your hands to make
your very own happy ending
and I am anything but.
Women learn early
how to shed whole selves
but still make it look pretty,
as if ugly is a crueller destiny than death.
What I am trying to tell you is,
I am used to giving up whole pieces
of myself just to survive without even saying
goodbye to the girl I used to be.
This is what women must do,
carve ourselves out of flesh that
they tell us is borrowed from men,
teach ourselves how they were wrong.
How we were always stronger without you.
What’s in a Name
Who named the sky the sky.
Who called the ground the ground.
Who whispered to the night,
this is who you are now.
So what is in a name?
You should know, my dear.
They gave you one when they cast you
in the kiln bringing you to life from clay.
Kissed your still flame-warm lips
and brought you to life to wreak tragedy.
Did they tell you that you were a weapon
and we name weapons too?
Names are powerful things,
they create destinies and break down kings.
They become the stuff of legend and art,
a name is a way to truly show what is in a heart.
Things become their names.
Turn a string of meaningless letters
into the sky or the stars
or into darker objects.
If only they had named you Mercy
instead of Monster.
If only they had christened you Charity
instead of Conqueror.
For All Our Hidden Witches
That night after the last betrayal,
I reached inside and pulled the grief
from my belly. Stared at it,
dark things all those people had done to me.
Retold myself that there
is still a god that resides within me.
Something softer than what the mirror
lets me see.
That some witch ancestry in me is still left,
a few potions still within this heart,
to punish without mercy
those who have given me lies.
They tried so hard to end me with words,
took their time and poisoned
every friend I had in this foreign place,
no home to me but still my fate.
So too I open my lips and let out
a curse’s refrain, the curse being formed
not from magic but pain,
let me live this life better than my enemies.
It has taken me some time to learn
that although karma exists,
you can let your hatred go,
not by destroying your own magic
but by letting it grow.
Question the Fairytale
What if Cinderella had an attitude problem
and Snow White just liked the idea
of strangers and poisons too much?
What if the Little Mermaid always enjoyed human company
more than her own kind
’s and Sleeping Beauty
just liked her solitude more than human touch?
What if the only rabbit hole Alice ever fell down was
a terrible mistake with an awful substance,
never discussed as such?
What if they locked Wendy away
for hallucinating about Neverland
and a boy who never grew up?
What if fairytales aren’t as innocent
as they sound and even princesses
aren’t perfect?
What if I told you that your damage
doesn’t define you and the way you survive
is no one else’s damned business?
Kiss the Dread
And darling, I hope you remember
To kiss the ghosts goodnight.
They are only older versions of you
that you have had to discard and forget.
And I have faith that when you put the sins to bed
you check under their beds for monsters,
just to say hello to them after all these years.
I hope you summon your courage