By Roopkatha Dey
If I were Eve’s daughter, I would worry about God.
Mom would tell me,
“This is not female privilege, this is the survival of the prettiest.”
Would you please tell me, mom, if there is a city where my body isn’t public property?
Is there a place where my flesh isn’t a battlefield and my bones aren’t taxed for simply being?
Give me a God I can relate to, mom, give me one achievement of Mary’s that didn’t involve her son.
T ell me I won’t have to bite my own skin to prove my love for you.
Bury my brain and let my heart live. Please. Let my heart live.
Must I cut away parts of myself to fit into the mould of holiness?
You were a disaster surrendering to your own hands, mom, did people call it an act of God? Or was your fall written in His script all along?
Will you give me a choice, mom? It is after all, my body to stew blood and eat my apple with.
Mom, you were the reason for the very first scar, do you feel it? The place where the skin broke along his ribcage.
Was it easy being so close to the wound that you came from?
She would tell me,
“There’s a quiet riot inside of us, love, we are Human with skin and bones, veins and nerves.
Hair and sweat.”
I would have told her I would never be a metaphor, I would never be a question mark.
This is a wide ocean, I am a girl with eyes and a voice and I wouldn’t commit blasphemy to protect my ruiner.
I refuse to worship the cage and call it salvation.
I am a product of the First Sin, I am a riot of the rib, would you name an ocean after me, mom?
Am I the prettiest rebel you’ve seen?
(Eve is my mother, my mother is Eve, what if I am Eve?)
Before she bit the apple, I would be told by her,
“It is my emotions that saved you. You are what your mother is.
God may not be a woman, but I am.”
My mother is the beginning of everything.
(Mom, did you find your voice?
Did you speak or were you spoken for?
Did the garden’s gates close behind you,
Or did you walk out willingly, head held high?)
Mom, tell me how to navigate a world where sin is the inheritance but choice is a distant dream.
Why am I still paying for a bite I didn’t take?
(Eve is my mother, my mother is Eve, I am Eve.)
The blood of the first woman runs through me.
But oh,
The apple,
Ripe,
The bite,
The spark,
The fall.
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