They accuse us of weaponizing our tears,
yet when those tears are spent
and we have no choice but to
wave the white flag
and change the locks, the
best we can do in the endless cold war
we’re left with
is
file the necessary forms
in the bureaucracy they built
on the proliferation of war.
A war that allows for
the weaponizing of our children
so they might better deliver
lethal payloads
sent in retaliation
every
other
Sunday,
aimed directly at hearts
already broken
( leaving a scorched earth in which
spirits die at the bottom of their bomb craters
where collateral damage is considered
fair game,
and children with battle fatigue
are left to dig their way out
and struggle with the fog of war
in which
all of it is the mother’s fault.)
So in learning how much there is to gain
from endless war
they doubled-down
and weaponized our sons
even further,
sending them to die thinking of their mothers
in their final embrace with that war machine
that was built to last
an
eternity.
And because there were those
who saw how little there was to gain
from allowing us to connect
on the deepest level,
they weaponized intimacy
and gave us
shame
placing emphasis on the construct that
it’s woman who gave us original sin,
so man had no choice but to invent war
and blame her
for
making him do it.
© Adrienne Veronese
International Women’s Day
March 2021
Photo by Stewart MacLean on Unsplash
