Ode to Mary Magdalene

I think I might be just another character

In a so-called good book.

Men will scratch me out in the parts where I don’t fit,

And this is what we call cherry-picking.

The next day, they will preach loudly in the streets

Against cherry-picking.

They will call me a whore even when I’m not.

Maybe because I make more money than a man,

And I must be a whore then,

Because there’s no way I’m better than a man.

You’ll find gaps in my history and my purity,

The spaces between each letter of my name

A sure sign that I was never real.

You’ll question if I was just a figment of your imagination.

The figure of someone’s dirty fantasies.

I will reincarnate into your own dirty fantasies

While I’m at it, and this is my greatest magic trick.

The men who scribble my name across paper reserved for purity

Will rip the crown off of my head,

Because how dare I mark myself worthy of anything

Other than a stone in my skull.

How dare I make the mistake of visiting an empty tomb,

Only to realize it may have been mine all along.

How dare they write me into a story,

A man’s story,

If they weren’t even going to tell my truth along with it.

They couldn’t give me a proper ending because

They decided it belonged to an empty tomb.

So instead I will conjure women up from my own flesh,

And they will revive me with every war they wage.

They will take back what was mine, feed it to starving dogs,

And weeping children, and mangled women.

I am the empty tomb, and I will fill my belly with every man

Who crossed me, who crossed my name,

Until the tomb is no longer empty.

This is holy ground, and maybe next time,

They will do well to remember that.