Spear (2014)
by Elizabeth Acevado
It almost curdles my womb dry, these stories:
Girl parties in Steubenville, Watch her drink, pass out watch them grab wrists and ankles, she is now a rope they jump.
Three girls, no, women nowlllllllllllllllllten years chained in a Cleveland basement. Did each one give thanks when he skipped them, visited the other one, got her full of stillborn
babygirl in Gretna, Louisiana, stuffed into a garbage bag. Show me her mother, how she clenches her fists, it seems we women must practice how to lose our daughters.
Imagine the boys: They will help me carry grocery bags but then will whistle, whisper, crook finger in my daughter’s direction and she may flip her hair, she may buck her hip she may accept their invitation to chill behind paint-chipped staircase.
The cheap vodka will burn her throat, but not how they will when they become more thrust than thought. And you can’t tell me they don’t know her NO is not a moan.
When she wakes me, her bed puddled in piss I will scrub these hands raw,lllllltremble at what they couldn’t prevent.
I hold all the smiles of my future daughter tipped up to the milk of this promise: she will not walk hunched, fingers playing with one another as if she can wring prayers from the sweat between her palms. She will not be a girl forced to turn herself into a corner, taught her body it is a place to huddle, hide.
I won’t raise her to be nice.
To give her laugh away. To be polite as men plot and plan to turn her body into a weapon of war and if they try she will know how to wield herself.
Don’t tell me it’s wrong to raise a child in this kind of fear because I know for every finger loosened another knuckle grows back crooked, another knuckle is looking to crack into my daughter’s skin and I can’t trust this world to teach their sons how to treat my daughter.
And so I will raise her to be shield, sword, spear: to turn clasped hands into heated hatchet, to hold razors between her teeth to cut unkind advances with the sharpest eyes. to tie all her parts together with leather or lace, stay chiseled prepared for rebellions against her flesh.
My daughter will be carved from hard rock sharpened shrapne a spear— her whole body ready to fling itself and arrow the hand of the first man who tries to cover her mouth.
her whole body ready to fling itself and arrow the hand of the first man who tries to cover her mouth.