Yes, happy Mother’s Day to you, too. Now, kindly shove your brunch where the sun don’t shine. We are the Witch-Mothers, and don’t think we can’t hear every cowardly, cornered whisper about our vulgarity and viciousness. Your quiet condescension is not lost on us, rest assured, and we’re asking you nicely to stop praying for our children’s souls. We’re doing just fine, thank you very much, and your 24 karat crucifixes are hardly a divinely mandated right to think yourself spiritually and maternally superior.
Wear your wildness any way you like or not at all, but roll up and stuff your judgment inside those fancy bags of yours. You have your family crests on your doors, sure, but our homes are blessed by our ancestors. You take your vacations, and we’ll take ours. Call us mad all you like. Your feigned perfection isn’t fooling anyone anyway, and I’ll bet your basements are scarier than mine. I’m not hiding anything, wives from Stepford. My dark is out there for all to see, and my cookies still taste better than yours.
My babes are hardly the devil’s spawn, though they can speak in hell’s mother tongue with the best of the winged minions. I did not conjure my little beasts out of a cauldron; I grunted and howled just like you did. My friends and I, the ones at whom you fling your jagged pity and pink-dick politics, were not granted a reprieve from the pain of childbirth by any dark lord, though I’ll admit I tried. Our pentagram tattoos stretched across our swollen bellies, and our babes suckled at our once-pierced and still-hard nipples. They bit us when they were teething, too, and our curses echoed so loudly our dead grandmothers heard them and blessed us. We rocked our little loves to sleep crooning blues lyrics and chanting Pagan rhymes, and, like you, we wept on the lonely nights when the fatigue blurred our vision and our whole village was fast asleep . We cast our circles while our brew bubbled on the stove, and we carved protection sigils into the floor under our children’s cribs while they crawled about the drying herbs with our black, furry familiars.
We are the Witch-Mothers, and we are a living contradiction. Sometimes we are stretch-marked, soft-bellied beauty and stained clothes. Sometimes we are leaking breasts and feminine ire. Sometimes we kiss our young sweetly on the forehead, smooth their hair back, then bid them to sleep so we may ride our lovers late past the Witching Hour. Sometimes we warm bottles between our legs and drift to sleep communing with the ancients and dreaming of horned gods and cloaked crones.
Don’t mock us, fickle one. We are the Witch-Mothers, and we will go to battle for the future of the innocence we are raising. I hate to break it to you, old man in the red hat, but my little ones are far wiser than you. Go ahead and fake your feminism, fascist. We’re on to you. My wee ones know the definitions of privilege and oppression, do you? I’m afraid they have more hopeful sentiment in the ends of their wild hair and grass-stained knees than you have in your whole bloodline.
Enjoy your carnations and your mimosas. I’ll be sipping stinky tea and snuggling with my brave-hearted babes beneath warm blankets. We’re not that different, you and I, and I hope your day is brimming with enlightening compassion and intriguing wonder. After you’re full and fed, stumble over to my haunted house, leaving your fire and brimstone at home of course, and we can swap birth stories and filthy jokes over some honey mead. You’ll ask me if my friendship makes you a sinner, and I’ll tell you yes, then we’ll laugh like raucous old crones who’ve set aside all care for social convention. Such unlikely friends we’ll be, my straight-laced Sister! You have some madness in you, I know it. Happy Mother’s Day, you closeted Witch. I won’t be waiting for you, but do come over when you’re ready to get dirty. The days grow warmer, and I’ve some bones to bury in my garden.
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Those wicked hours before morning found me wrapped in human-skin leathers stitched from the puckered faces of dead kings and wanting a fire. I took my time. I gathered river stones still stained with the blood of my orphaned dreams and circled a feeble bundle of storm-wet pine wood, juniper branches, last year’s sticky grief, and the oil-slick skull of a holy raven who died the good death.
This moment wants a new anthem.
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Yes, happy Mother’s Day to you, too. Now, kindly shove your brunch where the sun don’t shine. We are the Witch-Mothers, and don’t think we can’t hear every cowardly, cornered whisper about our vulgarity and viciousness. Your quiet condescension is not lost on us, rest assured, and we’re asking you nicely to stop praying for […] -
Yes, happy Mother’s Day to you, too. Now, kindly shove your brunch where the sun don’t shine. We are the Witch-Mothers, and don’t think we can’t hear every cowardly, cornered whisper about our vulgarity and viciousness. Your quiet condescension is not lost on us, rest assured, and we’re asking you nicely to stop praying for […] -
Yes, happy Mother’s Day to you, too. Now, kindly shove your brunch where the sun don’t shine. We are the Witch-Mothers, and don’t think we can’t hear every cowardly, cornered whisper about our vulgarity and viciousness. Your quiet condescension is not lost on us, rest assured, and we’re asking you nicely to stop praying for […] -
A soft and sudden flicker of warm candlelight bade me wake, and I knew the wandering hag-ghost was haunting my halls. Every Blood Moon she comes, hooded and hungry for the spice of my human arrogance, skull-faced with bare jawbone dripping, cavernous eye sockets sucking me from my dreams like twin black holes pulsing dead-center in the wild womb of the world. I no longer fear her, this fleshless creature who eats my certainty, who drags her frozen fingerbones down my cheek and tightens her grip around my neck, who steals my breath for a moment before blessing me with her arrhythmic dance.
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