Just Turn On the Light

We frozen women
bury our cold dead
in the night
shivering and alone,
the wolf howls above us,
we cry in solitude
and our tears turn to snow.

But what if we turned on a lantern?
What if we saw in the distance
a flash of a skirt,
a glint of a shovel,
heard a sigh of a tear.

We are not alone,
my wailing women.
We carry so much:
our pain,
our rejection,
our slut shame,
our body shame,
our queer shame,
our betrayals,
our scars,
our blood and bruises all over our bodies,
our rapes by friends and strangers,
our assaults by coworkers and passersby,
our catcalls and obscenities thrown our way

What if we turn all the lights on
in the goddamn house
and realize we are not alone at all.
We are all there in the same room,
standing together, strong.
Not a single woman must
bury her wounds alone,
our grievances and pain
do not have to be buried by ourselves,
but in fact together we can fucking raise the dead,
just with our voices,
loud and raging out
into the night sky,
so loud that the moon shakes
with our vibrations and stompings of Earth.
We are the night.

And we are the light.
And we are the moon altogether.
We are everything.
Just turn on the light.

Photo Credit: Natalia Medd Flickr via Compfight cc

Megan Coleman

Megan Coleman has been writing from the womb and is an emerging poet in Chattanooga, TN. Five of her poems appear in Elephant Journal (2017), and she is featured in Ordinary Madness Magazine (2017), Vocal Magazine (2017), finalist in the Fortnight Eyewear contest (2017), Visera (2012), and the winner in poetry in Chattanooga Writer's Guild contests in 2003 and 2004. She has given readings at Barking Legs and Mudpie Cafe in Chattanooga. She also has a B.A. in Women's Studies.

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Megan Coleman has been writing from the womb and is an emerging poet in Chattanooga, TN. Five of her poems appear in Elephant Journal (2017), and she is featured in Ordinary Madness Magazine (2017), Vocal Magazine (2017), finalist in the Fortnight Eyewear contest (2017), Visera (2012), and the winner in poetry in Chattanooga Writer's Guild contests in 2003 and 2004. She has given readings at Barking Legs and Mudpie Cafe in Chattanooga. She also has a B.A. in Women's Studies.

4 thoughts on “Just Turn On the Light

  1. AMEN Megan! Let’s ALL just TURN ON THE BLOODY LIGHT! How long must we take to understand that we are all one human family. Thanks for writing this! xoSusan

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