a funeral for the Maiden in Perpetual Waiting
women are taught to wait instead of generate
she came to the river to drink
she drank, and knew that she was done
but she lingered on the banks
hoping a rider would come by
and crown her the one
now she’s haunted
muddy and exposed
and she’s longing
for someone to hold her close
but she drowned herself
with her cemented legs
all the makeup she painted on her face
and now there’s water in her lungs
she waited to be crowned
as the one who needed a rib
as the helpless maiden
in obedience to her fated
pre-written fate
i tried to resurrect her limp body
but the waiting and the water had done its time
saw no tracks from a rider
i bury her in the ground and call her mine
months go by now
i dig up her corpse
she’s free now
from the waiting and the morgue
i collect her bones one by one
and lay em out neath the scorching sun
wear em as a crown on my head
she waited to be crowned
as the one who needed a rib
as the helpless maiden
in obedience to her fated
pre-written fate
now her spirit
dances by that same river where girls wait
she dances them into a new fate
she crowns them with her reckless grace
she hands them the pen and says
sharpen your blade
she ain’t waiting
to be crowned
as the one who needed a rib
she’s the mother
the siren
in obedience only
to the god she chooses
to believe in
THE MAIDEN IN PERPETUAL WAITING AND THE MORGUE
if a human body stood in perpetual stillness - just waiting - it would atrophy and die. the muscles meant for exploring, climbing, building, skipping, running, and dancing, fucking, fighting, loving, crafting, and living, would shrivel into ghosts of themselves.
the flesh would lose its memory of movement.
the blood would pool instead of run and pulse.
the joints would freeze in a pose of false devotion - kneeling, maybe - until the body became a mausoleum of what could have been.
this is what waiting does.
and this is what women are taught to do.
to stake the cards of their lives on being chosen rather than choosing, to wait instead of generate, to ask for crumbs at culturally inherited tables instead of creating their own table, to be looked at instead of look out, to project savior onto the world instead of doing the soul work to save themselves.
this is how women are taught to slowly chip away at their own souls, and call it womanhood.
this Cultural Morgue, this Longest Line in The History of The World, this Eternal Waiting Room - this is where women are told they belong. it is our inherited blueprint.
wait to be chosen by a man. and while you’re waiting: prove that you’re soft enough, loving enough, hot enough, and desirable enough for a “good one.”
wait to be recognized by your industry. and while you’re waiting: prove that you’re talented enough, better than her, not crazy like her, hotter than her, commodifiable and marketable enough.
wait to be happy. wait to feel loved. wait to feel good in your skin. because who you are is never enough. what you have is never enough. you are taught to be immortalized in your waiting.
in this eternal Waiting Room, women stand in a line - billions deep - hands tied behind their backs, waiting, waiting, waiting.
to be deemed worthy, good enough, to be called beautiful, safe, lovable enough.
forever waiting to be chosen.
and there is no resurrection here. no real life.
only the ghosts of billions of battered women with painted faces who never left.
HOW SHE DIED
the Maiden in Perpetual Waiting of course, does not know that she is dying. she doesn’t know that her feet have already turned into cement. she doesn’t know that the rider isn’t coming. she doesn’t know that this is a soul robbery, a cultural spell, a mass hypnosis.
so she keeps painting her face.
keeps trying to be good.
keeps trying to be chosen.
but even her painted face does not guarantee her worth.
nor does her patience.
her waiting sure as hell doesn’t either.
so her lungs fill up with water.
and she dies.
not because she was not chosen by another. not because the rider never came. not because the love never arrived.
she dies because she chose the eternal waiting room over living her precious life. she dies because she abandoned herself on the altar of almost.
she wasted the miraculous beauty of her one impermanent life and current version of herself on the illusion of waiting until.
what happens to a woman’s soul in the Waiting Room is this.
her suicide does not come all at once.
it drips in through the cracks.
no one around her may even notice her soul leaving her body. but it happens, in the invisible moments she trades self respect for imagined belonging.
think: staying with a partner who is “half decent” and doesn’t hit her but drains her with manipulations so subtle she chronically doubts herself.
think: staying connected to her family even though her dad still speaks horrendously towards her like he has all her life. remaining loyal to a relational system who scalds her aliveness in the name of tradition and duty.
think: abandoning the kind of feral art and work that sets her free because her friends or family think it's “too much” or “unrealistic.”
think: putting her fulfillment on hold, postponing her desire, hunger, joy - until she has the perfect partner to validate her existence, the perfect money to fill her gaping wounds, the perfect body to overcompensate for her grief.
these aren’t dramatic acts. no one full swoop of death.
they are quiet ones.
tiny permissions denied.
freckles of God fumigated.
it happens slowly, slowly, death by a thousand soul cuts - until one day she wakes up and wants to die. and maybe she does.
because she did not live.
she waited.
and this is by design.
this is not a personal failure.
this is cultural architecture.
this is the blueprint of womanhood in the frame of patriarchy.
the path we are trained to follow.
THE CROWN MADE OF BONES
because women are not given any map for life beyond the Waiting Room, they must do the brave work of crafting their own - from the blood and marrow of their own becoming.
to truly live, a woman must disavow to serve as a patriarchal pawn. she must abandon the spell where she has been taught to bleed herself dry. she must walk off the chopping block of outdated ideals and say not me. no. more.
because here’s the truth. in patriarchy, even when you are chosen, you are not truly chosen. you are consumed. exploited. used up. and when you become too wise, too wrinkled, too wild, too much…you are discarded.
another maiden replaces you,
and the cycle begins again.
to bury the Maiden in Perpetual Waiting, is not an act of shame, but of sovereign rite.
only then can a woman leave the waiting room and walk into a life that is actually hers - a life where she obeys nothing but the impulse of her own soul. where she bows only to the Gods she dares to choose.
this is how women transmute the Longest Line in the World:
not by shaming their longing, not by silencing their ache, but by longing and desiring, but absolutely refusing to wait.
refusing to wait to live fully.
refusing to wait for permission.
refusing to wait until they are chosen by some mythical perfect man of their psyche.
refusing to disrespect their souls by staying in relationships, families, traditions, religions, friend groups, and on, that ask them to discard their aliveness for the sake of fake intimacy, tradition, or duty.
refusing to wait to love themselves - no matter what.
because a woman who loves herself - who is FULL of herself - is a weapon against the tyranny and poisonous sedation that once ruled her soul.
only then is she not full of other peoples opinions and expired ideals.
only then can she obey what her soul asks of her, and fulfill her deepest desires.
only then will she not try to resurrect the limp, exhausted corpse of The Maiden out of panic, but instead lay her to rest with honor - dawning her bones as the crown of her evolution.
this is the woman the world has been waiting for.
THE RIVER IS STILL THERE
the Maiden has been crowned, but the river that drowned her is still there, haunted by the ghosts of maidens before, jam packed with the cultures current era of women who have been hypnotized into believing this is where they belong.
the Maiden stalks the river, spitting prayers into the air like holy perfume, whispering heretical prophecies into the auras of the women, lurking around those who have ears to hear, seducing them back into their bite.
some will hear her voice in their head and call themselves crazy, and if not them, then the rotten company they keep will. they will medicate the voice away, drink it away, fuck it away, until they never hear it again. they cannot be inconvenienced. they will poison and annihilate the very voice of their salvation, like they are taught.
but some, yes some… some will hear her voice and recognize it. not as madness, not as a psychosis, but as memory.
they will feel it in their womb like a drumbeat. in their throat as the song that could never be silenced no matter how hard they tried. in their dreams like deja vu, like smoke enveloping their lungs - seductive, sacrilegious, and utterly unrelenting.
and they will crawl from the river on blistered hands,
shaking from the cold of so much waiting, and they will not dry off.
they will not pretty themselves.
they will not apologize for being soaked in the deathwater of what once captured them.
instead they will weep.
they will wail.
they will sing.
they will dance.
they will speak.
they will stand naked on the banks and say
i remember her.
she died
so i could live.
and they will walk. and they will lose everything to protect this sacred voice inside of them. against all odds, they will protect it. to lose this voice again would be soul erasure. annihilation. violence. death.
so this is the hill they will die on tending, remembering, and defending:
the right to their own wholeness.
and their muscles will strengthen as they build their new homes, their new castles of refuge, their new identities, their one precious lives…
wearing The Maidens bones
as a crown.
if you heard the Maiden whisper here
and your bones ached at the memory of waiting
if something in you clenched
cracked
or howled here…
you are not crazy.
you are remembering.