blessed among women

Ode to Veiled Women

Oh! My Sisters…so many of you faceless, wordless, nameless, blessed, and veiled.
As you see the world around you through the blue haze of the veil,
do you ever wonder what you are missing?
Do you ever stop to think that the world is missing you?

You, my sister, who sees only that which is in front of her, never to the sides, and never behind…
do you stop to mourn what you are missing,
do you know that you’re only getting one third of the picture?

Does it make you angry that God made you a girl?
Does it make you angry that even though God made you a girl,
Man made you a veiled woman?

Do you wonder what the wind would feel like on your whole face,
raising your dampened hair and wilted spirit?
When was the last time you raised your whole face,
your whole head, your whole self,
naked and unashamed into the bright Sun of the afternoon,
glowing like the mother of all creation?
Are you even allowed to think of that?

Oh! My Sisters…so many of you faceless, wordless, nameless, blessed, and veiled.
Your eyes were opened a long time ago.
You know that you are missing nothing.
Child of the West: this world misses nothing you cast forth.

You, my sister, who sees everything in a three-hundred-sixty degree scope of present, past, and future…
You only mourn what you can’t imagine.
You never stop to think about what could be hiding under the rocks, waiting for you to slow down.

It never occurred to you to blame God for making you a girl.
It never occurred to you to blame God for making you a girl, because your fathers and your brothers agreed you could be anything you wanted to be.

Do you wonder what mountains there are left to climb?
Have you had enough of shaving your legs, painting your eyes black,
cutting your hair just so, smoking because you can?
Do you see yourself mother-naked in the mirror, or do you only see
What you have hidden in all of this creation?
Do you allow yourself to think of that?

I think about you, Fatima:
Daughter of the Prophet.
Mother of God.
Small child of Piedras, with her brown face upturned in my hands.
You have so many faces.
So many faces.
And they are all beautiful, behind all of the veils that we wear, for all of the reasons we wear them.

Yes, the faces are beautiful.
Even mine.

mil besos,

rmg