Mother Earth

Once upon a time, long ago, on a planet called Earth, there was a woman jaunting along a dirt patch road. As she sauntered down the road, a cool breeze swept through the trees and ruffled and scrunched the leaves, tousled the coils of her hair, and gently lifted the fragrance of the spring blooms to the air. She paused as the current of the wind encircled her entire body and took in the sweet dewy fragrance of the posies and the earthy musk of the leaves, and then continued on her journey. She came to a pampas grass field and ventured deep into its plain, ever while taking in the softness of the plant's tendrils as they brushed against her skin.

"This is a man's world," she heard a voice call out in the distance, so she grew wings, and flew to a place more tender and suited for her supple nature. She landed in a grove of vibrantly colored sumac trees and traveled deep within its thickets, and felt nature's embrace as the leaves caressed her skin and clung to her hair, leaving yellow streaks of pollen behind as she moved deeper and deeper and deeper into the heart of the grove, till she reached a spring of water.

"This is a man's world," she heard carried on the breath of the wind from a far-off cry in the distance, so she grew gills just under the curve of her cheekbones, and dove down into the water, swam to its outlet, and went deep into the ocean below, and surrendered her heart to the depth. There in the frigid cold surrounded by darkness, as the waters lapped against her skin, she thought she had found peace.

"This is a man's world," she heard radiating through the sound waves, so she swam to the sea, arose from the waters dripping salt and sand, sprouted roots from her toes, and planted herself on land like a palm tree. Just as she began to take root and bloom, she heard a voice say, "this is a man's world." So, she clipped her roots as if mere buds, and took to the sky like a shooting star, tantalizing the moon and alluring the sun.

"This is a man's world," she heard a foreign voice whisper in her mind. So, she descended from the cosmos like a micrometeorite, and took rest in a far distant land. Just as she was nodding off into a deep slumber she heard in the still trickling sweat of her skin, "This is a man's world." So, she grew fur like a beast and journeyed to the jungle. There she found no rest, so she grew out her mane, and trekked to the hot grasslands.

"This is a man's world," she heard as she stepped into the pride lands. So, she shed her fur as if afflicted with mange, and took to the wetlands where the herps dwell. There, written in the slime of the algae riddled with the stench of the marshes, read a message, "this is a man's world." So, she wandered back to the dirt patch road, and followed along until she came to the riverbank.

"This is a man's place," two fishermen said as they ogled her with hate and disdain in their eyes, if not because she was a woman, then for her appearance. She went to hurry along, but tripped and stumbled, and came face to face with her reflection in the stream. Wings bulging from her back, gills under her cheekbones, weak tuber swirled around her toes, cosmic dust smeared all over her body, sunken dark cast eyes, wild mangy hair, and thick slick slime coating her pores. She smiled and laughed at the peculiar sight before her, and then declared with a loud roar, in a world of humdrum outcasts living for the caste there are none like me.

Then, she took to the sky, plunged to the ocean, entrenched herself in the earth, bolided to the cosmos, stretched out and rested on far lands, grew out her fluff, grew out her mane, laid claim to both the jungle and the grasslands, embedded herself in the waterlogged lands, and fully ensconced herself within the world itself, spreading out long, wide, and far, spanning the entirety of the man's world above and below, so that wherever man trod, wherever man looked, and wherever man rested, was in her, a woman.

~ The End