Anchoress

I am dead to this world.

Rendered obsolete because a woman no longer bleeding for breeding is deemed an eyesore like a derelict building, empty & slated for demolition.

*

Yet I am useful still, and standing. Free, not stuck in the linear flow of human time,

My mind can touch the shimmering threads of endless worlds and weave them, bring to being dirt and stars, dust and gods, multitudes and one.

The body a thing set apart, long past programmed yearnings and ‘you should’s’

A fortress against expectations and approvals.

Like a medieval anchoress in her cell, choosing to be walled in brick by brick, I take my leave of the outside world.

*

I have lived in one room alone and in one room with many, on couches and floors and in other kinds of cells. I have feasted like a queen and lived on hand-outs like a beggar.

No ascetic,

I was in the world and enjoyed all its pleasures until I was satiated and all indulgences done to dullness.

When I found my conscience I raised it for women, the poor, the disabled, the queer, the veterans, the old, the animals, the abused.

Up against the bellowing smokestacks of slavery capitalism I made a squeak but joining the many voices we lobbed a few well-aimed bricks and knocked a few pillars down.

*

Now I’m old and older. Chemo-tired, fake-elbow sore and just a bit frazzled, I’m still with you,

my fresh homies, from my 21st Century retirement cell. My body confined by drywall and faux marble,

Escape-enabled but why would I leave.

The ceiling fans are whirling and the a/c is cranked. The window blinds half-closed or half-open. Always in a state of ‘I forgot to vacuum’ and empty Amazon boxes climbing the walls.

I have too much toilet paper but only one fish. He’s a betta, though, and likes my singing.

The food left by my door always disappears so they know I’m alive.

Like a neutrino I’m rarely reacting with normal matter but my mind is in clouds netted by photons. I move in spirals, blinking in and out of this reality like a quantum particle.

My words stream out in multi-verses pulsing with conviction and contentiousness, ecstasy and exasperation, common sense and uncommon sentience.

I coddle courage, incite integrity and revere revolution.

I believe the light will prevail but not in my time… perhaps yours.

I am cheering you on, a double-fisted biddy-bitch, from my anchoress cell.

*

There are blessings enough for all and I have left them out where anyone can find them.