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.