Born was I from the flowers of Oak, Meadowsweet & Broom. Such delicate beings. One might think pain could not be part of my coming into this world. One might think I merely rolled from the stamen, a pollinated jewel of otherness, all floral scents & precious petals. You would be wrong. The men who told the myths were wrong. Man’s magic cannot numb the pain of transformation. There’s more to birth than contractions and blood. Pain is what makes the flower; budding body cracked open by forces far greater than you & I. Ask your mothers. I envy you this.
I was conjured. I did not learn into this Woman form. No mother did I have to tell me the ways of the body. No sisters. Spirit of the understorey was I, a formless entanglement of energy bound by self will & ignorance to the whipped cream flesh of Woman body; to servitude. Thrust from moist dark depths through the thighs of Earth. Lain before arrogance. Ignorance. Bare breasted Blodeuwedd. Blodeuwedd, the flower face. Blodeuwedd, the She-Bird. Blodeuwedd, the title of my captivity.
They leered over me, eyes gobbling at the soft curves of supple flesh. Chests puffed like tender offal, waiting for the cry. I did not cry. I did not move. I remained amongst the grasses in the biting cold of dawn. They would have me begging for warmth. I did not beg. I parted my legs. Stroked the thicket between my thighs. I gobbled back. Bore myself into their cowled, ugly faces. Watched shame as it played through the inversion of Oedipus. I laughed then. I have known their kind. Tasted the residues of unsuspecting men, felt the collapsed forms of their bodies, the temporal weight of decomposing flesh. I have penetrated the hollows of man’s features; eye sockets a resting place for all manner of kin. Now, above ground I can smell the dichotomy of their fear.
It is a peculiar thing to be born into the vessel of Woman. To be bound by a symbol so feared by mortal men. Life giver. Life taker. Woman dances with the melody of death each moon. And yet, Woman is treat as-though she is powerless. Subjugated. Does man forget his mother? Does man forget his passage into this world? The vermillion cloak. The metallic tang of hemoglobin. The searing Helios light.
Man has forgotten Blodeuwedd. Let me tell you her story.
In the beginning, the beginning of all life there was death. Time wasn’t time then, it was impermanence. Blodeuwedd was not Blodeuwedd. First she was the abyssal plain. Water gave way to rock. Rock gave way to clay, clay gave way to soil. Then hypha, a sprawling network of mycelium feeding & growing on the carcass of Life. Understand this, death is not death in the understory, it is continuation, renewal, replenishment. All that is dying is living. All that is living, is dying. I have always resided here. Beneath the crust of beating hearts. I know many things about your kind. Myths travel through mycelial networks like cormorants over the ocean. I have witnessed the rise & fall of civilisations. I have listened to your plotting & corruption. The footsteps of armoured men beating the earth like a drum. I have heard your love making. Child rearing. I have absorbed the battle cries. The stabbings. The spilt milk. I have been frozen. Flooded. Scorched. I have tasted sacrifice. There is nothing Man can tell me that I don’t already know. Earth birthed Man: from the seas & the soil came Thee.