From The Chiaroscuro Anthology to The Infernal Dames

Yesterday, The Chiaroscuro Anthology closed with a poem depicting intergenerational trauma, starting with rage against parents, ending with a promise to a child.

So hush, little baby, don’t you cry,
Mama’s here to help you fly.
And if flying feels too much to do,
Mama’s gonna stay right here with you.

A soft ending to The Chiaroscuro Anthology—nineteen poems about my autistic experience.

Yet, I’m not just autistic. I’m a woman, 53 years on this earth, and furious.

Not Joking – Global Gender Parity in 2158

The World Economic Forum estimated, late last year, that it would take another 134 years to reach global gender parity.

134 years

This day, this year, this decade, this century—we have granddaughters still fighting the battles their grandmothers thought they had won. Intergenerational inequity. Injustice, passed down like recipes and silverware. From the Greats to the Silents, the Boomers, Gen X, Millennials, Gen Z, Gen Alpha, and the unborn Gen Bravo.

The First Wave. The Second Wave. The Third Wave of feminism.

How many more waves must we ride when we’re already facing a tsunami?

A tsunami of dead women.
A tsunami of gender pay gaps.
A tsunami of stolen autonomy—of everything, even down to kitchen bench heights and seatbelts in cars.

Why not build a fire so big that not even this tsunami can extinguish it?

From this idea came The Infernal Dames.

While I have no children, I make this promise to the grandchildren of the next generation.

I do not want you to inherit the intergenerational trauma of centuries, the ache of millennia. I don’t want you to have to sing this lullaby and know it’s real:

Hush, little baby, don’t you cry
Mama’s holding things that you can’t buy
And if those things do make you cry
You’ll understand why, bye and bye.

The Infernal Dames

A forensic reckoning, a class action, a ledger of women burned by silence, by medicine, by the system.

We gave more care to punch cards than to living women. “Do not fold, spindle or mutilate.”

We built hospitals where no one listened. “It’s anxiety. Lose weight.”

We prescribed silence. “Take this, it will help.”

We institutionalised grief. “You’re too much. Take this, it will help.”

We pathologised hormones. “You’re hysterical. Too much.”

We erased. “Your file could not be found.”

It is my intention that The Infernal Dames will roar.

Tomorrow, we begin.