An Invitation

By Laura Gail Grohe

Come sister,
let us remove heart’s armoring,
and sit for a moment.

No more sideways cutting glares of,
“Back off bitch, the man is mine”
or
careful calculations of one another’s
weight and wages.

You are not the blade hungry to cut me
from my man, my job or home.
And my unlined skin and slender thighs
make you neither ugly nor worthless.

Let us cease the mindless chant of
fat stupid ugly
which we try to silence
by shining it outward
like a lighthouse beam
onto women around us.

Let us smash the noisy lens.
Pick up the pieces and hold them to the sun,
letting light split apart in jagged edges.

Shatter what kills you.
Know that in women
our cure lies within the poison.

Healers and witches hid in church convents,
covering wild wisdom under nun's wimples.
This is how we have survived
through burning and binding.

So come sister,
sit with me a while in this tent of red.
Let us place that which we slice ourselves upon,
here on the table
that we may find a cure.