How I Fall Asleep
25 Sep 2011 Leave a Comment
in Poetry
I have to read children’s storybooks to fall asleep at night
I have to force myself to wander through the rabbit hole
To get to the magical land of happy endings
A land of courage and cupcakes, salty licorice whips
Of rainbows and secret gardens
Of time travel and new love
True love
Not fake love or unrequited love or hate love
Not a land of wars, exploitation, submission or objectification
I have to read children’s storybooks to fall asleep at night
Because when I wake up in the morning there are streams of sunlight piercing through grey snow clouds
Illuminating my dreams of wonderlands
Revealing the harsh gritty world of women’s suffering
This reality is not just a wrinkle in time
It’s a constant, everlasting power struggle
An epic tug of war with BIG PLAYERS
On one side we have:
MILITARISM, CAPITALISM, IMPERIALISM, COLONIALISM AND THE HEAVY WEIGHT PATRIARCHY
On the other side we have:
Women and their children
On the sidelines we have:
Husbands, fathers, lovers, brothers, sons, grandpas, uncles
Who, deep down want to cheer on their
Wives, sisters, mothers, lovers, daughters, nieces and aunties
But cannot-will not because they are shackled to their gender role
and they are afraid of committing heavyweight treason.
Femininity. Feminized.
An ideal, cursed dichotomy wrought in conflict
Femininity. Feminized.
Beautiful and Unseen
Soft spoken and Silent
Caregiver but Carefree
Intelligent but Not Assertive
Mothers and Lovers
Sexualized and Exclusive
Labourers but Unpaid
Victims but Survivors
Women have so many expectations placed upon them that they are set up to fail
And if they do succeed they are the exception that proves the rule
So I have to read children’s storybooks to fall asleep at night
Because each day I’m grappling with the truth about women’s struggle
The struggle to survive, to support their families, to live and yet feel dead inside
To find a place to stand, to smile
The struggle
I spend my days listening to CBC news and reading articles
By academics, feminists and activists
And I’m wondering how all of these truths cannot outweigh the lies
How they cannot counter a transnational Neo-liberal patriarchal war machine
Each day there are thousands of people crying out, writing out, acting out
But no one hears—or rather everyone hears
But no one knows who’s in charge…
How can we reason with a machine?
One that violently forces its way into every crevice and facet of our lives?
I have to read children’s story books to fall asleep at night
Because the horrors of violence against women flash behind my eyes
Images of women being
Threatened, terrorized and tortured
Stories of women
Robbed, raped and refugee
Cases of women
Brutalized, battered, belittled
Examples of women
Forced into pregnancy, prostitution, and public humiliation
Everyday women
Sold into sexual slavery,
Cheated, chained and charred
Exploited, evicted, erased
Displaced
STOP Shaming Trafficking Oppressing Patronizing STOP
I have to read children’s storybooks to fall asleep at night
Because this is the shit nightmares are made from
And although to those dropping bombs and wielding machetes
These women are faceless, nameless and useless
They are NOT to me!
They are my sisters, my mother, my neighbor—they are me.
Violence is happening right outside my backdoor
It’s not far away or other
It’s our country’s troops in Afghanistan
Our government’s investment in fighter jets and cutting social services to pay those debts
It’s domestic abuse dubbed a family affaire
It’s the 400 some native women either missing or dead
It’s the 1 in 4 women who will experience some form of sexualized violence
It’s the women who make up most of the 90% non-combatant casualties in conflict
And the women who are 70% of the world’s starving or near starving
There is an imperative here, one of feminist anti-violence solidarity
That we cannot let be high jacked by
Imperialist, capitalist, post-modernist
NON SENSE feminism
That just wastes time and distracts us from the real issues at hand
Which are freedom, equity and security of person
The right to live in a dignified manner
To be respected, nurtured and comforted
To give birth to spring flowers of justice and peace
So that I do not have to read children’s storybooks to fall asleep at night
So that these violent realities will float off to never never land
I will go bravely into the night with a coralline necklace warding off fear
And I will wake up to blue skies and sun shining down indiscriminately
On all our faces not burning a one
I want to wake up feeling fully refreshed
Ready to trot off to OISE to study
Chocolate and strawberries,
Xs and Os
Butterfly eyelashes and
Public policy based on a ‘hug it out’ model
All the ways women are loved
I don’t think this is asking too much, and it doesn’t have to be just this way
I just don’t want to have to read children’s storybooks to fall asleep at night.
