Upon Reading "Paradise Lost"
adorn your daughter in garlands of gold and a red river of silk as you tattoo her skin and forsake her hand over to a lover for a night and her master for life
bathed in roses red so she too is a flower in a field to be daintily fingered; her neck shackled with rubies and sapphires as they rub against her skin, cold and brittle; her ears weighed down by the wealth of her new family as they cling onto diamonds that dim in comparison to the eyes that scour the crowd as they approach her like she is the goddess of pagans, their love for her easily interchangeable with worship.
it’s the least they could do, love her one last time before they sell her off to the first of many nights where she will lay naked under a man larger, angrier and harsher as he uses her as the canvas for his greed and lust; he uses her as a mirror that sees who he really is before he hides behind that suit and tie and she covers the pain with the rouge you gift her tonight
no wonder we dress our brides in colours of love with crystals of magic and weep over their beauty for this will be her last time in the spotlight the last loving embrace the last tender kiss a last whispered prayer as they give their daughter away to the man she was created to serve
isn’t that what happened after all? God tore open Adam’s chest and ripped out a piece that belonged to him but used it to birth the kind of girl that was the yang to his timid yin;
a crack in the rib and behold! a woman only to serve him
God meant for them as “one flesh, one heart, one soul” but tonight as she sits in the back of her car the heavens roar and remember how Eve had walked away, for “all higher power in her presence falls degraded”, for women were not birthed to merely fill in your empty footsteps but to deepen them with their own impressions, make the empty indentions in the sand into a home, rather than fall into the trap of conventions reduced to something you own
not because a woman is made of a man but because she is made the same yet she does it better – one flesh, one heart, one soul that carries courage and invincibility and a thirst for more than to merely serve in silence – not because a woman is made of a man but because they are made of each other, carrying parts of one another in their souls
but today all we read is how God punished Eve by asking her to carry our sins within her belly
to birth a new generation whose sole purpose is redemption for Eve’s inability to cower down – I think of her, and watch your Adam puff out his chest, smile at the camera and wave as we cover your face with a heavy veil.