wildscape. literary journal

Alchemy of Her
by Waverly Vernon

The first god I knew was my mother:
blood-warm hands, milk-soft prayers.

She called the sun to rise, stretched time in lullabies,
planted my name into the earth.

Then they came, men with stone-thick tongues,
wrote new laws in the dust, said no, child, that was not god.

                            That was a vessel, a rib bone’s echo,
                            a footnote in the book of man.

They feared the alchemy of hips wide enough to carry nations,
wrists that twisted herbs into medicine.

Voices that hummed the universe awake,
so they burned the wise women.

Cloaked them in hex and horror,
called their knowledge poison, their power a curse.

                          Tell me what god ever bled once a month,
                          and still walked the earth unbowed?

What man ever split himself open, birthed another heartbeat,
and called it love instead of war?

You built your temples on the backs of the ones you tried to bury,
called us witches because we made miracles without you.

You called us wicked because we did not kneel,
but we are still here.

Still spinning life from nothing,
still singing the old songs to children who will learn
the first god they know is not the one you gave them.

about the author // Waverly Vernon