What It actually is

It lights a candle, all the illumination it is permitted in its small abode. It shuffles to its bed and lays down. It sighs as it remembers its daily routine. Honesty: the others revealed their innermost darkest truths at it, reveling in describing its birthed failures, its fated uselessness, and its entrenched frustrations. Relief: it approached its designated hole and proceeded to perform the mandated acts of physical humiliation. Faith: it listened to regurgitated absolutes of its divinely appointed place in society.

A special chamber existed only for one selected once a month. Among its kin, one name was called. That one would be interviewed. If accepted, it would be allowed certain grudgingly accepted tasks that allowed it to help society peripherally with the others’ tasks. Most failed the interview and there were no second chances.

With the chambers completed, it headed for its daily chores. The others had deemed its kin unworthy of most tasks that helped society thrive. Anathema amongst them was working the land. Generations ago, the Cataclysm had rendered the world a near infertile place to live. Its kin had always been blamed for this. Only the others could work the land, and everything else that would bring society back to a former glory. Its kin were merely tolerated for biologically imposed necessities. Thus, its kin worked where no one else would. Its chores were drowned in the fecal detritus of civilization.

It reached inside its robe for a tiny object. A heart-shaped locket that had been handed down, in secret, generation after generation. It accessed, through it, random memories added long ago. It did not understand how the device worked nor why memories came as they did. It did not really care. Every day, when it spent some time outside, it carefully held the locket to receive sun light. At night, it pinned the heart to its forehead. It felt slight slithering movements within its skull. Then it dreamed of the memories of its ancestors.

A woman painting. A landscape outside her window. Verdant fields, momentous mountains. Animals in their habitat dancing their cycles in Life. Wind slowly carrying the air in its back. Her mind at ease with a powerful feeling of internal peace and all- encompassing wholeness.

A woman working. Her chosen daily routine. She traces lines on the ground, trails of life where the seeds will grow. Her love for the Earth, the ground, the seeds, and the harvest. Her people, spread through her being spicing the ground. The seeds will grow faster, but not forcedly. The harvest will be plentiful.

A woman sitting. She looks at herself. At her carapace. She sees everything balanced. Her body is the temple of her soul. Her curves are cornices. Her wrinkles are Triglyphs. Her legs columns. Everything as it should be. She looks at her inner self. She finds what she does and what she loves. She finds her fears and her dreams. She finds her power and her weakness. She finds her truths and her lies. She sees herself and she loves what she sees. She is not an individual part, but the sum of all of them openly and honest.

A woman loving. She loves her people, the ones who have been with her through her life and watched the world through her eyes and felt life through her heart. She loves her offspring, who came from her; those she nurtured throughout the years holding them close and passing her love to them in perfect symbiosis. She loves her mates, whose moments together, amidst beginnings and endings, encapsulated ephemeral worlds within worlds of laughter and tears. She loves her land, the grass she ran on, the springs she swam in, and the horizons she dreamed of; she loves nature, the sunrise and sunsets, the lights and shadows, and the hearths and animals. She loves all the raindrops she tasted on her tongue giggling with preternatural innocence and beautiful glee. She loves her self because no one else has lived or will live like her.

A woman lusting. Her body moves like a ship on a windy dune, like a boat down rocky rapids, like a bird through a heavy storm, like lava down a volcano, like a rock on an earthquake. Her hands grab flesh fiercely, clutching at a branch on the edge of a precipice. Her nails, a predator flaying its prey. Her legs rubbing against flesh, rocks sparking. Her feet tense, toes trapped by pleasure but striving to move free. Her breasts shiver, nipples stalagmites of crystalized rapture. Her neck a delicate glacier willing to melt for the wandering tongue. Her mouth a host and a guest for sinuate tongues bathed with gusto in ardent saliva. Her eyes awake to doors on simultaneous layers of life. Her orgasm a symphonic crescendo, with her body playing the instruments into a singularly harmonious cacophonic note of absolute oneness.

A woman dying. Not alone. Never alone. She dies when she gives up through her fears. She dies when she is chained to lashing fury. She dies when she lives without loving her self. She dies when she loses her being. She dies when she is enslaved to others' validation. She dies when she gets lost in the void of solitude. She dies in the nothing of somethings lost and ephemeral anythings. She dies when she is severed from her connections to the living.

A woman living. She sees the beauty in the little details, an insect passing by on a mysterious journey, a tree still in passive permanence. She catches a swift glimpse of her self as she passes a reflective surface when a drop of rain falls forming brief ripples. She glances at a person walking by with a slight frown, at a cloud as it dissipates into myriad shapes, at a baby lost in wonder, at a pot cooking a delicious meal, and at hundreds more. They are the bagatelles of the mundane turned into particles of life.

A woman being. She is her dreams, not the ones thrown at her like rocks. Her love, not the one pushed on her by fate. Her body, not the one forced by others’ opinions. Her faith, not the one delivered by cannons and principalities. Her talent, not the one enforced by fiscal fears. Her mind, not the one perturbed by illicit strangers. Her memories, not the ones tainted by anger and frustrations. Her choices, not the ones cooked for her by chefs of deceit. Her life, not the one lived by others.

A woman birthing. The life she held inside, fed through her body, protected by her body, and loved within her body. The pain of birth, shared by both, eternal bound. The nurturing embrace, a blending unique, life given, and life returned. The witness of life ensuing: the firsts that are never forgotten, the emotions that coalesce in balance where before only primal instinct resided, the thoughts and sentences and peculiar words and stories that come from wonder and innocence and synapses springing to life. She loves her offspring without boundaries, she protects them without fear, she supports them without wavering, and she consoles them without judgement. She is their mother forever more.

A woman thriving. Against the storms, an owl battling the furious winds. Against the tsunamis, a fish daring the gargantuan waves. Against the earthquakes, a lemur escaping the swallowing earth. Against her fears, jumping off the cliff knowing the aeolian currents will gently catch her and soothingly take her down. Against the crowd, hordes stepping aside from her incandescence. Against the deceptions, the third eye of wisdom wide open. Against the fixed ideas turned into clichés boiled into stereotypes, tearing apart social and personal non-sequiturs.

A woman recounting. A storyteller of lullabies, of heroic tales, of romances, of mysteries, of creeping nightmares, of loss and gain, of hope and death, of life everlasting, of dreams never ending. Heroes fail and romances end in stories of sadness and foibles. Folk prevail and love works its way into life joyful in stories of rebirth and forgiveness. She creates the story of her life, an epic saga embracing sonnets and ballads, poems glorious and poems despaired; a life of gains and losses, moments exploding universes and instants of stars collapsing; a life of ghosts haunting shadows of regret and what could have beens; a life of fulfilled hopes fought through insurmountable odds and dreams vanquishing insoluble nightmare formulas. Her life an epic saga, an ode, to her self and her atemporal permanence in the collective memory of star dust.

It woke up. This day it felt different. It felt stronger. Memories resided deeper in its being than before. It went on its daily routine. This day, its name was called.

The chamber had a table, two chairs. It sat on one, ready. One of the others sat on the other one.

“How can you help society?” the other asked.

“By being me.” She said. She took her robes off. The others only saw her kin when needed, in specific chambers, in specific circumstances, and very seldomly. She put her robes back on, not as a glorified bag, but as comfortable piece of cloth.

It looked at her, unable to speak. Trembling. She noticed changes in its body, its face. Anger. Confusion. Excitement. Fear. She smiled.

“You can talk,” she said.

After it regained its composure, it said, “You will be severely punished for this.”

“I know.” She kept smiling at it. She knew her fate. Her society was one of routines. They never changed. So, she waited while it regained enough calm to call for her to be taken away.

She spent the rest of the day doing her tasks; that could not change. She found an opportunity to approach the one who would be sleeping in her adobe.

“Look beneath the mattress,” she explained where. “Listen! You need to take it out so sunlight can reach it. Otherwise, it will stop working. Put it in your forehead and it will do the rest. After you are ready, do not do as I did. Give it to someone else. When all of you are ready, conspire and act.” The other one looked at her confused but nodded.

After the tasks, law officers took her to the central square of their settlement. The others were all there. Her kin watched close by, to better learn the lesson of her betrayal to society.

One of the protuberant members of society spoke:

“Our society can only subsist if we do as our ancestors have, generation after generation, to rescue the civilization its kin destroyed. As long as we follow the stablished order, we thrive. This one has disrupted the order by showing itself. Your existence,” the other said looking at her kin, “is only permitted as it is useful for society. Your bodies exist due to biological aberrations. Could we, you will not be. Transgressions must not be tolerated. This one,” it pointed at her, “is ours no more.” Her kin assented and murmured. The others clapped. It turned and looked at her. “As is our custom, you may speak. Briefly.”

She nodded.

She wanted to give a rousing speech. She wanted to tell them who they were. She craved explaining to them what the memories had shown her, in previous occasions, of the world before and why it had collapsed. She yearned to inspire them into a change of system. She knew, though, they were not ready. She also understood the purpose of the locket. She was certain they would too and act accordingly. So, instead she said:

“I leave you for now. In peace and hope.”

She walked ahead of her escorts and left the settlement behind. One day she would return. One day the others would realize what men were and were not. One day she would embrace her sisters as women. She looked at the wasteland of sorrows surrounding her ready to reap them apart as a human being.