in response to “tips to look after your husband.” home economics text book 1950 something.

 

it never mattered
what it said
in those books.
it never mattered
that we moved on,
that we tore out those pages,
blacked the ink,
burned them,
reprinted cleansed
on new paper
from new trees
the same old stories
new told.

what mattered is what
we could not unhear.
it was in songs that steadied
and lulled our pulse,
made us forget.
it was the unspoken
in every fairy tale
that wrote lesser than
in our blood,
it was the words
we never heard
that shaped our bones
into women.
hush now – daughters
of the earth
old anger deafens us –
the stones are speaking our stories
listen.

 

 

Drawing by Tim Hewitt-Coleman