First Howl Of A Half-Breed

All seems hopeless.

He is standing in front of me,

watching,

waiting.

He's expecting something.

I turn my head away,

reject his unspoken request.

His eyes narrow expectantly.

I close my eyes,

listen to his footsteps

as he leaves.

I can feel him turning back,

one last time,

watching,

waiting.

I turn my head back,

just for a moment.

There are others around;

black wolves with golden eyes,

they are the color of the darkest night.

They howl,

their songs echo unendingly.

I wince when I hear them;

memories of vicious taunts,

of personal attacks flood my mind until all other thoughts have vanished.

"Wolf!" they would shout,

and they would laugh.

Dozens of them would shout at a time.

They knew before I did

and they punished me for it.

Wolf.

That was the last thing I wanted to hear.

The last thing I wanted to be reminded of.

I open my eyes and watch as, one by one,

the wolves begin to disappear.

I am back in the narrow tunnel,

below the trapdoor that took me here.

I can't breathe;

there is no air here,

this far into the abandoned temple.

"Howl!" my guardian shouts,

"accept yourself for what you are,

before you ask the acceptance of others!"

He had read my mind.

He knew what I was afraid of.

I struggle and raise my head.

I try to make a sound,

but it comes out as a dry whimper.

I try again;

there is even less sound this time.

Gathering any strength I might have had left,

feeling the ever familiar warmth of my guardian's presence,

I lift my head again.

The howl is a song of power,

of rebirth.

The gods can hear the howl;

I know that they are watching,

listening.

I howl again,

my howl is joined by another.

I don't recognize the voice of this howl,

but it is pleasant, soothing.

A light breaks through the roof;

the trapdoor has been lifted.

Several pairs of hands pull me up, out of it.

I breathe fresh air.

I pant as I am embraced by all of them,

and try to break free.

I look back to the entrance of the trapdoor,

thanking my guardian for his help. 

Copyrighted to me. You know the speech.

Just A Girl

Tell me I'm worthless.

Call me a "little girl."

Treat me just as you would treat

the common "whore"

or an object for your pleasure.

Tell me that my only purpose in life is to

make babies,

clean the house,

do the dishes

and feed your sorry mouth.

Tell the whole world,

when I challenge you to a race,

that I am "just a girl."

And when I outrun you,

your friends will insult us both, "you were just beat by a girl!"

Call me a tom boy,

call me weak,

call me a sex toy,

call me a geek.

Tell me that I'm not as good as you,

after I've beet your sorry @$$,

and plunged my sharpened blade,

bitter with the prejudice and stained with my soul's blood

into your pitiful heart in our battle of prejudice.

Tell me that women cannot be honorable

after you've gunned down

hundreds of lives, raped

and destroyed the lives of innocents and shown no mercy

when I have taken mercy on the weak, the ones you slaughtered.

Call me impure,

call me unholy,

call me a "tree hugger"

call me pitiful.

Tell me I'm not good enough

after I've cleared the battlefield and destroyed

the soldiers of hate,

the generals of sexism

and the thug of a king, too good for a queen.

Tell me God cursed women

because Adam was gullible

and "tempted" by a bone-girl to

eat from the tree of the thing God does his best to hide from us--

--knowledge.

Tell me women are weak

after you've pushed an 8-pound baby

out of your "privates",

bled 6 days out of every month,

and have been pressured by millions of other women to be anorexic.

Go ahead--tell me that I am inferior to you.

Every step you take,

I am one mile ahead of you.

Prejudice is the weight that holds you back

and presses me forward.

You can tell me that I'm

nothing more than a toy, a gift to you from God.

Well, I hate to break it to you--

this toy isn't playing with you,

and no toy, to my knowledge, has ever had as many feelings and thoughts as that of the woman.

You can tell me

that I am just a girl.

Do you know what you are, in the eyes of your enemies?

Just a boy.

Just a silly boy incapable of facing the truth--Eve is a fantasy.

I can tell you anything,

I can tell you that I'm better than you--

but I'm not.

I can tell you that I'm right and you are wrong--

but I will never repeat the harsh words you have so carelessly thrown at me.

You can claim that you

are superior,

but I can claim that you are

weak-minded, prejudiced

and full of shit.