“Where Did the Wild Girls Go” by B Story
Each woman is born
Mother Moon
To a tribe of wild girls
Who live in the forest between her ribs.
They scratch and fight and swim.
They swallow sunrises whole,
Befriend the wolves,
Sleep with their spines
Curved along branches,
Their feet dangling,
And never fear the fall.
They live to tear up the world.
Where do our wild girls go?
When did the forest grow still?
He pulled the poem from her throat
A long red ribbon.
He holds her down
The words wrapped in a ball
Round his fist
She gags
And over his shoulder
She see the shadow
Of girls rushing to the water,
Fleeing their homeland.
Where do our wild girls go?
When the doctor rummages within her,
Oblivious to popping tendons, the rearranging of organs,
the unknitting, unmooring.
They gape at the squalling meat
He pulls free.
They are so intent on this creation
Raw and welcomed and wanted,
They miss the shadows at the door,
The wild girls slipping out, away,
A last hint of pine and sea
Before the lock clicks.
Where do our wild girls go?
At the altar, our faces trapped in nets,
Like a creature yanked up
Into the light, into foreign air,
Captured, kept, gutted.
Wrapped in cloth as
White as a winding sheet.
No longer buoyant.
Our girls slid back into the wet dark.
They escaped the reception,
The feast.
Where did our wild girls go?
Did you notice when they left?
In the classroom,
Our hands nailed to the desk.
Before the mirror,
With the red blade.
Our wild girls had no choice.
They saved themselves
When we could not.
But where did they go?
Where did the wild girls go?
I know the truth now,
Moon Mother.
They are mounting an army
On the horizon.
Generations of them.
Our mother’s wild girls
Our grandmother’s,
The children of witches
The daughters of Sophia.
We pause our work,
Lift our heads,
scent the storm on the wind.
The time is now.
The wild girls are coming home
To tear up the world.
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B Story Artist Statement:
This work is about the parts of ourselves we abandon as we grow in a world that is often hostile to women.
