Meg Brodeur '24

by Meg Brodeur '24 on March 3, 2023
Portfolio Co-Editor

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“So saying, her rash hand in evil hour

Forth reaching to the fruit, she plucked, she ate:

Earth felt the wound, and Nature from her seat

Sighing through all her works gave signs of woe,

That all was lost.”

(Paradise Lost, Book IX, Lines 780-785)

I’m blamed for the demise of my sex:

the sex created under a pretense of partnership with man

They cite a wrong flick of my tongue as the initial flame,

That has burned women at the stake for witchcraft,

seared the widows thrown onto funeral pyres

and branded female slaves as sexual currency

I stare eternally from my cursed flesh,

at the consequences of only my actions

They tell women to know their place,

As subservient creatures created for the pleasure of man,

Thousands of translations have melted away the words

“partnership” and “equality” from the pages of scripture

They have distorted the word “woman” into a tacky, five-letter word-

Devoid of the divine feminine energy that dwells within my daughters

I watch with tear-soaked eyes at the scars on their skin,

Each individually feeling the burn from my initial flame

I’m blamed for the excruciating pain of childbearing

and take responsibility for the shameful habit of menstruation

It is Adam’s punishment that they strictly view us as possessions—

properly bought and sold with the blessing of a holy man

Through bloodshot eyes,

I’ve seen little girls beaten, chained, and enslaved

Under the pretense of “arranged marriage”

I’ve watched them be stripped of their purity:

the same sexual innocence that men hold so closely and praise so loudly

They scream at the top of their lungs, claiming ownership

over something that doesn’t belong to them,

Has never belonged to them,

And will never belong to them.

A little girl is a child, she cannot be a vixen

Do not call her a femme fatale to justify your pathetic lack of willpower-

Blame Adam for that.