Written In Blood

Octavia Butler's death was sudden. When I heard the announcement, I began to cry.

I am overwhelmed. Francis Newton, Rosa Parks, Coretta Scott King and Octavia E. Butler. I have a sense of foreboding. I have a feeling of despair. It is a feeling that I am struggling to call by name. I am not sure what it is. Perhaps I don’t know enough about transition from life to death. I know that our body is the house the where the spirit dwells for an unknown time. And who cares about my sadness or confusion? Instead of ringing my hands (covering mirrors and stopping clocks) I should honor the life of these women who know struggle first hand. They know loneliness, jail, fighting to get your words heard and printed and distributed in a world where people are still surprised by your presence. Yesterday I walked into a staff meeting at my new job (I am not known by many of the teachers) and a woman sitting beside me said, “Excuse me who are you?” I was the only person black and female around the table. Lord God from Zion! Had I been cleaning the floor, I would have been ignored all together!

We’re losing so many women, some of whom we can name, and many more we can’t. Many women are being stolen from us daily. Francis Newton was taken away from us by lethal injection. When we are not being stolen by bullets, we are taken by cancer, diabetes, heart failure, starvation, eating disorders, AIDS, domestic violence and war.

We are barely breathing.

Some of us are being thrown away. Where are all of the displaced women of the Gulf Region? Some are in New York, others are in Houston and I even hear that others are in Oregon and Utah. Those of us who don't speak English live just below the radar of the Minute Men and anyone else who thinks they are saving the country from terrorism or keeping “those people” from taking our jobs.

How many women are locked away in prisons or waiting on death row? Waiting in Guantanmo? Does anyone known if there are women detained in Guantanamo Bay? How many are picking through rubble in Pakistan, hiding in their homes between raids and bombs in Iraq or sitting in a boat offshore in Africa to avoid being raped?

The history of Women has been written in blood, but fret not! I'm willing and able to continue the struggle.

Come, ye disconsolate, where’er ye languish.
Come to the mercy seat, fervently kneel
Here bring your wounded hearts, here tell your anguish
Earth has no sorrow that heaven cannot heal.

Thomas Moore