Women's Writes - Works

A text from my mother reminded me my time was running out. Oh, she didn’t nag or anything. She was just asking what I was writing. I dashed off a flippant reply and kept my eyes on the road. An exit announced a town…and that’s what it said. A town, 5 miles. I checked the map. There was no town listed. It must be small. Okay, I’ll give it a shot. If there was nothing, I would be back on the highway in no time.

Burglar, her cat, stared in confusion as she threw the magazine across the room. She resisted the urge to leap after it and stomp on it, strangle it. “It’s just paper and ink”, she reminded herself. No, she’d really like to strangle the person who wrote the article, the one suggesting women depart clinical medicine for the world of alternative medicine. The article explained that alternative contained the essence of the feminine, the spirit of the divine mother goddess that lurks in all women, and that evidence-based medicine – the article called it “patriarchy medicine” – was a trap to lure women into the patriarchal, imperialist, colonialist western lie.

SHE is lying on the sofa, face down, hands dangling. She is asleep…or is she stoned? It’s hard to tell. Empties surround her – empty perfume bottles, empty nail polish bottles, empty compacts, empty make up cases. She has clearly been on a binge.

Playing tetherball alone
While the beautiful girls
Gather on the playground
To talk.

Currently, fewer than 15% of the world’s countries are ruled by women. In spite of the small percentage, that is higher than most of history. Only 2019 was higher, with one more woman leader than now. Europe tends to be the best at electing women. Countries with female leaders include Germany, Bangladesh, Switzerland, Norway, Nepal, Myanmar, Taiwan, Estonia, Serbia, Singapore, New Zealand, Iceland, Trinidad and Tobago, Barbados, Ethiopia, Georgia, Slovakia, Denmark, Belgium, Bolivia, and Finland. Among those countries that have not had a female leader (which is over 100 countries), you can include not only the United States, but also Russia, China, Italy, Japan, Mexico, and Saudi Arabia. If you look at that list, you can see one thing: most of those countries have a highly defined definition of masculinity that would likely be threatened by the presence of a woman leader.

Ben snatched the paper and flew out of the room. The nurse looked at Susan, pleading for forgiveness. Susan forgave her and joined Ben in the car. He squealed out of the parking lot, and raced toward home, breaking the speed limit in a rare show of temper. At the house, he pulled clothes out of the closet, packed two suitcases, and headed west, toward a state where the father didn’t have to sign.

When he woke up, he was in…a waiting room? No, it looked more like the lobby of Olive Garden. He sniffed. It smelled like Olive Garden, too. This might not be so bad, if heaven was an Olive Garden. He could go for pasta every day…every hour, if they permitted. He patted his stomach and his mouth watered.

Devin pulled her close and claimed her lips again. She felt his hands on her back, inside her shirt, against her skin. She tried to pull away, but her passion drove her forward, further into his arms. She gave herself to him, completely and totally. She forgot about the purity card.

This morning I made the biggest mistake of my life. I opened my trap in front of the guys at the office. They were dissing women, as usual, talking about how weak we were, how ridiculous we were, how stupid we were. Well, I certainly managed to prove I was stupid. It wasn’t that I disagreed with them, or that I presented evidence to back up my claim. No, that was all right. I proved I was stupid by accepting their challenge. Prove it, they said. Not statistics, those lie. Prove you can take pain. Prove we can’t break you.

Today I will be uppity.
Yes, I will be uppity.

What should I say?
Should I tell you it’s been great?
I loved the flowers,
The wine,
The black eye?

Megan was at work when the doctor called. Michael had been particularly nice to her ever since she took off for the biopsy, and now he came to get her rather than bellowing her name across the store. She pulled her hands out of the dishwater, wiped them on a damp towel, and dripped toward the phone.

The doctor left her to get undressed and lie on the examining table. He returned with the nurse when she was ready. She shivered; it was cold in here. The doctor washed his hands, and she was glad because his hands were warm as they felt around the small spot on her breast where Brady felt that…lump thing…last week.

The image of Brady’s bathroom before she moved in flashed before her eyes, but she didn’t say anything. It had taken her half a day to get all the caked on soap scum off the tub, and the toilet…well, it probably should have been a Superfund site. She smiled a tight smile and went back to the bathroom, leaving Brady to struggle with Mia’s diaper. He knew how to change a diaper. Megan suspected he did it badly so she would always do it. Same thing with putting dishes away. He always put the big dishes on top of the small ones until she finally took it away from him and did it herself so they wouldn’t have any more broken dishes.

“Huh?” Brady was looking at a small hole in the baseboard. “Bet we’re gonna get mice. You better call the landlord.”

She opened the window to hand out a drink, and recoiled. There was a man in the car, and he was naked from the waist down. He had a hard on, and grinned at her as he caressed it and ran his tongue along his lips.

Time is not a woman’s friend
Because she is expected to be young.
Ready to work,
Ready to play,
Ready to love,
Always ready for the gaze of men

Two years ago, Lynette had participated in a research project at the college. A student was surveying older women to see if they were satisfied with their life, if they were happy with their choices. She had bubbled and chirped about how fulfilling it had been to give up her career and settle down to take care of her husband and her children, be a full time mother and devote her life to service.

Hi, everyone. Long day today, so I feel like I’m copping out. I am giving you a haiku. I am simply too exhausted to write any more syllables. But it has been a satisfying day, spent doing work I find interesting and rewarding, work I am able to do thanks to the battles fought by those brave, wonderful women who came before. I want to make sure their work wasn’t in vain.