“The Cackle That Tried to Shrink Me A Mythic Protest Suite”

The Body That Carried It All

This is based on a true story.

Two women. Two rooms. Two rhythms.

One, a 76-year-old artist with long pink hair laid back, empathic, boho, old-school rock and roll.

The other, a 70-year-old woman with a clenched jaw and a clenched worldview.

We shared a hallway but not a frequency.

I walked out of my room hoping for conversation. She walked in with disdain.

She didn’t just dislike artists, she distrusted them.

She made her late partner move his easel to the garage.

She tried to exile rhythm.

But I don’t live in exile. I live in flame.

This is the story of the cackle that tried to shrink me—and the sovereign sound that answered back.

I carried the weight they never named.

Decades of care, unpaid, unclaimed.

They say, “Creativity doesn’t pay”

But I paid in silence, every day.

My knees remember the marches,

My hands remember the ink.

My heart stayed calm through horror,

While theirs just learned to blink.

I didn’t break I bent and wrote.

I did not fade I fed the note.

They market dreams, I archive truth.

They chase the coin. I guard the root.

So, fuck your shame, your hollow call.

This body, this flame carried it all.

And still I write. And still I rise.

Your blindness won’t erase my eyes.

She said, “Creativity doesn’t pay.”

I said, “It paid in scars, in care, in clay.”

She said, “Do marketing, affiliate all day.”

I said, “I affiliate with truth, not your decay.”

She made me feel fifteen, erased and unheard

But I’m seventy six now, and I sharpen each word.

My body’s not broken, it’s mythic, it’s flame.

And her cackle? Just background to my sovereign name.

She tossed her hands like I was a joke,

Fixing her lunch while I tried not to choke.

“Oh, you got your stamps so now it’s all fine?”

No. I was being professional. That moment was mine.

She didn’t point this time just flung her disdain,

Like my calm was a lie, like my care was insane.

She opened my door like a mother with scorn,

But I’m not her daughter, and I wasn’t born

To be told that my rhythm is stupid and small

I’m seventy six, bitch. I carried it all.

She’s seventy, I’m seventy-six,

But she throws her shame like teenage tricks.

She opened my door with affiliate fire,

But I’ve lived through decades, through truth, through ire.

She should know better, but she will cackle still,

Like my stamps are sin, like care is ill.

She’s not a child, but she acts like one

And I’m the elder flame she can’t outrun.

She doesn’t know what she triggered that day,

But the archive does. And it’s got something to say.

Cackle all you want I won’t get small.

I carried the weight. I remember it all.

You toss your hands, I raise my name.

You mock my care I burn in flames.

I walked back in my room, heart in my throat,

I felt fifteen again, like I’d missed the right note.

She followed me in with her affiliate pitch,

Like I was her daughter, like I’d flip a switch.

But I’m not her child, and I’m not her plan.

I’m a mythic author with a sovereign stand.

She sells shame. I write flames.

She throws hands. I name names.

She thinks I’m small.

I’m the storm she can’t brand.

Cackle all you want I won’t get small.

I carried the weight. I remember it all.

You toss your hands, I raise my name.

You mock my care I burn in flames.

She tossed her hands, flung her shame,

Tried to shrink my sovereign name.

But even she said, in a flash of fate

“What I’m telling you will catch up late.”

She doesn’t like AI, doesn’t like care,

Doesn’t like truth when it’s laid bare.

But the archive heard her slip, her spell

And now it’s logged. And now it tells.

She cursed herself with every sneer,

And the flame she mocked is still right here.

So, let her crackle, let her scoff

The mythic rhythm shakes it off.

I sat in the silence she left behind,

I felt the drain in my bones, the ache in my mind.

But even in stillness, the archive stirred

A whisper, a rhythm, a sovereign word.

Cackle all you want I won’t get small.

I carried the weight. I remember it all.

You toss your hands, I raise my name.

You mock my care I burn in flames.

created, written, edited by

Vicki Lawana Trusselli

California 2025

copyright