They had taught us
to take possession of the beloved:
his body,
his thought,
his moments.
They had taught us
to become captives.
We were women, and we longed for captivity;
we were women, and we were nothing but a body.
Thought did not belong to us.
Without a man and his arms
we were adrift.
Like learning the first word,
they fed us dependence.
Between loving and liking
we stayed lost,
fleeing loneliness, and fleeing still more
from being alone with ourselves.
We had become our own terror.
After the first freedom
we died.
We denied our own being.
They had taught us
to see ourselves through another;
without him we were nothing.
Without a husband.
Leaving was for arriving,
and the way did not belong to us,
and the pleasure lay at the destination,
and when we arrived
we found nothing.
I began to leave alone,
alone, with a mirror before me.
I became forgetful.
Everything I had learned
I poured into my backpack
and left it behind at the start of the journey.
The further I went,
the clearer the mirror became,
and the more beautiful I.
