Luna

A creative piece in response to anti-abortion laws and attitudes.

The lunar cycle is twenty-eight days long,

The waxing and waning of the moon in a sky,

Hanging amongst the fires of constellations.

Something about the silver moon feels inherently feminine:

Artemis for the moon, Apollo for the sun.

Artemis’ women shadow the moon, the waxing and waning.

Twenty-eight days ebbing and flowing, orbiting.

Our bodies in time with the months.

Ancient languages breathed the same sound for month and moon. 

We move in identical rhythm to the pull of the waves 

Constrained by the throb of a masculine twenty-four hours. 

We turn from girlhood to womanhood,

Blood between our thighs,

Dancing to the lunar cycle.

Amongst this bleeding, is the knowledge of a life we could carry;

One born of the other, safe in our wombs.

This option, this choice follows us, 

Forever.

We know: the risks we take, the consequences we’re inviting.

Yet we choose,

We want to make our choice,

To hold the reins of our own bodies,

To be in harmony with the moon.

A tsunami, a hurricane crash down 

Punching 

Drowning 

Hitting 

Strangling us. 

They steal our choices 

Our voices.

The masculine rage that threatens us always 

Pulses greater than ever

With its claws tearing out our voices 

And our lives.

Women are stripped naked,

Their bodies and autonomies torn in the violence.

The metallic stench of desperation 

Of fear

Unfurls across the globe.

The quotidian feminine terror, amplified

So that it echoes and echoes 

And echoes.

Each woman in the world shudders

As the hands around our throats close.

The lunar cycle is twenty-eight days long,

So are women.

Artemis still waxes and wanes with the waves

As she did all those moons ago,

While mortal women fade.

Prayers to a long-forgotten goddess

Caught in voiceless throats.

The hope longing for the rebirth of equality 

Is brutally extinguished 

As ideologies, barbaric and oppressive,

Rip women’s choices into shreds.

They lie there, broken and bleeding,

Silent. 

Words by Molly Cockerill (she/her)