Listen: Are you breathing just a little, and calling it a life?
-Mary Oliver
Him: Why are you doing this?
Breathe in 2, 3, 4…
Her: I am breaking.
Breathe out 2, 3, 4…
Her: Have you ever looked a dead woman with a pulse in the eye?
Hold 2, 3, 4…
Help: Do they have a bed for her in the psych unit?
Help: Can you ride with her in the ambulance?
Breathe in 2, 3, 4…
Help: You are getting hit with a contraction: breathe.
Breathe out 2, 3, 4…
Her: I am breaking.
Hold 2, 3, 4…
Everyone: You abandoned your children.
Her: I cried out for help.
Her: It went unanswered.
Her: Then I asked for something equal, more balanced.
Breathe in 2, 3, 4…
Everyone: You’ve self-isolated.
Breathe out 2, 3, 4…
Her: And now I know God.
Hold 2, 3, 4…
Her: I heard a primordial cry deep in my bones coming from women before me: “You are breaking” they said. “Do something, now.”
Breathe in 2, 3, 4…
Her: Have you ever visited her in that locked room?
Her: Ever felt the coldness coming from a body who stayed too long?
Her: Ever felt the deafening silence coming from a woman who never found her voice?
Her: Have you ever looked out that barred window of her room?
Her: My mother. The one in the ambulance now.
Breathe out 2, 3, 4…
God in a dream to Her: I have come for the dead.
Breathe out 2, 3, 4…
God in a dream to Her: Do you want to enter the land of the living?
Hold 2, 3, 4…
Her: I want to LIVE.
Breathe in 2, 3, 4…
Culture: Have you ever thought about silencing all those deep lines? Then people won’t know about all that breaking.
Breathe out 2, 3, 4…
Her: You want me to silence the physical testimony of my deepest knowing?
Culture: Yes.
Hold 2, 3, 4…
Everyone: Why are you doing this?
Breathe in 2, 3, 4…
Her: Because the one who came before me.
Her: And the one who came before her.
Her: And all the rest of them.
Her: Could not.
Her: I can.
Her: I will.
Her: So she doesn’t have to.
Breathe out 2, 3, 4…
Everyone: I don’t get it.
Everyone: How could you?
Her: How could I what?
Her: Choose to live?
Her: Choose life?
Her: Does a woman have to die to prove her life is worth living?
Her Again: Have you ever looked a dead woman with a pulse in the eye?
Hold 2, 3, 4…
Her: I have.
Her: My mother.
Breathe in 2, 3, 4…
The Church: But what about what the bible says about women? About mothers? About staying? What about THE CHILDREN?
Her: The bible?
Her: The bible is a story about being freed from the forces that will kill you: emotionally, spiritually, psychically.
Her: It is a story about people who have come back to life. Liberated from death.
Her: Liberation. Resurrection. Liberation. Resurrection.
Her: The bible is an invitation to live. An old story that rests on the voice of a man crying out for the FREEDOM of God’s people from forces that kill.
Her (now sensing her voice coming back to life): And the voice of a woman, a fucking woman crying out with every fiber of her being:
HE LIVES.
Her (her voice now in complete aliveness): I refuse to bow to any religion, relationship, or culture that upholds the dying of the mother for the sake of everyone else’s living.
Breathe out 2, 3, 4…
Her: I will not silence my lines of deepest knowing.
Hold 2, 3, 4…
Everyone: Not silencing those lines will cost you everything. Everyone.
Her: I trust in the power of those lines. They are my everything. My own exterior fault lines that brought me to surrender. They testify of my essence.
Breathe in 2, 3, 4…
Her: I am healing.
Breathe out 2, 3, 4…
Her: I will do it for her.
Her: And for the ones who come after her.
Her: I will do it for all the women who could not and cannot.
Hold 2, 3, 4…
God: Stand.
God: Still.
God: Let the stillness and silence heal you. I will fight for you.
Breathe in 2, 3, 4…
God: The angel of death has passed.
God: You are still breathing.
God: Liberated. Resurrected.
God: Now, here is my command:
You are alive.
Now, go fucking live.
For them.
For her.
For you.
Breathe out 2, 3, 4…
Her: (Now bowing in reverence to the one who called her back to life, with a voice loud and trembling…)
Yes, fucking Ma’am.