I turned onto Jackson Slough with trucks streaming past in the drizzle and the dark of winter in the Delta. News blared from the radio. My reluctant right eye flickered. My shoulders slumped. Though the day has held promise, my empty house waited with its trash can full of splinters and its rain-spattered windows. The lights do not shine. No welcoming warmth flows from the heater. My key will scrape cold in the lock.
Suddenly a voice filled the car, the round sure tones of a woman who is not me but who nonetheless knows me. As the story of this woman unfolded, tears began to stream down my face. I rounded each corner, raising and lowering my high beams, working the wipers, gripping the steering wheel, and crying. Her pain reached through the continuum of space, time, and place to touch my pain. Where our two anguished souls met, a glorious leap towards redemption could not be forestalled.
It’s the fourteenth day of the sixty-first month of My Year Without Complaining. Life continues.
“I Can’t Keep Quiet” at the Women’s March on Washington 2017
“Quiet”
MILCK
put on your face
know your place
shut up and smile
don’t spread your legs
I could do that
But no one knows me no one ever will
if I don’t say something, if I just lie still
Would I be that monster, scare them all away
If I let them hear what I have to say
I can’t keep quiet, no oh oh oh oh oh oh
I can’t keep quiet, no oh oh oh oh oh oh
A one woman riot, oh oh oh oh oh oh oh
I can’t keep quiet
For anyone
Anymore
Cuz no one knows me no one ever will
if I don’t say something, take that dry blue pill
they may see that monster, they may run away
But I have to do this, do it anyway
I can’t keep quiet, no oh oh oh oh oh oh
I can’t keep quiet, no oh oh oh oh oh oh
A one woman riot, oh oh oh oh oh oh oh
