Women of a certain rage

don’t know how things work.

We don’t know why

our mother didn’t have the language

for what she carried.

Why,

as a kid, we wanted to know

everything

and then when we got older

we wanted to unknow things.

Why

we ask children what they want to be

when they grow up.

Not, where do you want to live?

What do you want your days to feel like?

What kind of creature do you want to become?

How it is

that, somewhere in America,

a little girl is hiding in an attic

writing about ICE

in her diary.

And we don’t have brains

big enough to comprehend

the concept of Gloria Steinem dying

with fewer rights than she fought for.

How our neighbours aren’t ready to call it fascism yet.

Because the sirens are meant for someone else.

How it came to be

that buying up antique books

to hide them

from our destructive AI overlords

is a subversive political act.

Why

Orwell failed to predict

that we’d buy the cameras

and that our biggest fear

would be that no one was watching.

How divisive politics got to be

this insane thing

ruining our one microscopic life.

We wake up—

(but, my God, don’t be woke)—

check what a politician said,

get angry,

send it to someone,

and hate several million strangers.

Women of a certain rage

don’t know exactly how we got here.

But we do know some things.

It’s all gonna be over

and irrelevant soon

and you won’t wish

you scrolled more.

You’re a ghost—

a meat-coated skeleton—

made from stardust,

riding a rock

hurtling through space,

with maybe 80 summers

if you’re lucky.

And, I mean, it’s a drag

and we’re all busy,

but there’s gonna need to be

some kind of revolution.

So maybe one day

the world will be ruled

by a woman

of a certain rage.

A mother.

Someone who knows

how to hold a crying thing.

Someone who knows the future

is a child asleep in the next room

and you don’t gamble

with what you love.