Gloves off in the rose beds, we kneel not in prayer but rebellion— trowels scraping against the neat borders they drew for us.
By Elena Vale2 years ago in Poets
They said bring pies so we brought axes disguised as rolling pins our aprons starched white as surrender flags but tied too tight
Click. Click. Click. The sound of wooden needles counting stitches like casualties in a quiet war. Wool unravels between fingers
Lesson One: How to sharpen a pencil into something dangerous. How to write your name in script so perfect it cuts like a scalpel.
The china bears the evidence— hairline fractures where her grip tightened but didn’t shatter, water spots like faded tear stains
She folds the rebellion into fitted sheets— each crease a battle line, each sock matched and rolled tight as a Molotov cocktail.
**"The Clock Tower Rebellion"** They said a woman’s place was *in the home*— so we built homes inside our fists. Every hour, the town square clock strikes,
The books here breathe— spines cracking with the weight of words their authors swallowed: *How to Poison a King and Smile at the Funeral*
They built a wing for us— glass cases full of empty gloves, sound recordings of laughter with no mouths to claim them, a quilt stitched from letters
We didn’t come to be quiet. We came to knock on doors they thought were sealed, to say the thing they wish we’d swallow.
They told us God was a man with a beard, a throne, and rules that hurt us. But we have met the divine in other forms.
Dear me, You don’t owe them a version of yourself they can digest. You were never meant to be small, pliable, or palatable.
