HYSTERIA AND THE FAULTY UTERUS

Much of my writing concerns the inequalities women experience, and if this sentence alone discourages you from pursuing reading my work, then perhaps you need to read it most. 

Like a twig to a tree, the river to the bank

the sun and the shadow, never absent from each other

and would you believe me if I told you

the word hysteria comes from the Greek word for uterus? 

 It was believed by the Egyptians  

that a barren womb caused a woman to be hysterical

and that man is the resolution to our folly

that the womb wanders within like a leaf in a squall 

And The Greeks agreed and believed 

a lack of orgasms was the cause for female madness 

that men should gather and fuck fix us good

and deposit in us his masculine medicine

Then the devil derived the disorder 

summoned by unwed women with weeping wombs

and the church exercised exorcisms 

prescribed prayers and mint and a man’s touch too 

so when my father threw a bottle 

and I watched and wept, and my boss forced me 

to stay after being assaulted by a customer, 

and when my uncle came up to me

at my father’s wake to ask why 

I was crying and causing a scene, and when I told a boy 

I didn’t want to give him my number

so he followed me home and I blamed myself

can you guess what they all called me? 

hysteria is no longer a diagnosable disorder

but men have been diagnosing me all of my life 

and sometimes, sometimes I believe them 

today we protest on our pavements 

pebbled with privilege, but they are still peppered

with patriarchy and hope is the ochre flame

in the sky that promises us a chance that

one day, they will see the human and not 

the hysteria, the woman and not the womb

and maybe, maybe, maybe, one day

I will too