THE NIGHT BEFORE WOMEN'S DAY, 1987

 

the night before Women's Day
i dreamed a nice young man
with a tie and a briefcase who said:
”we are going to kill you and your daughter"
i was frightened
are we going to sit indoors and quiver in fear forever?
i thought
hell, no, I thought
i asked someone to take good care of her
and went defiantly out in the streets
scared
he showed me a bloody sword
”so you thought that you could protect her?”
he gave me the hilt
held the point against his own chest
”i killed your daughter, now you can kill me”

i kicked him in the balls and ran home

they didn't kill my daughter
they did something worse
she was bleeding
i took her to the hospital
they had inserted a diaphragm
she was three years old
they said it was necessary
”no one knows what can happen to her, with that mother”
white coats nodded serious agreement
and looked punishingly at me

i sat by my daughter's sick bed
she slept
no one had taken off the dress
soiled with blood and vomit
her face was dead
she had lost the world
she had lost belief in the world
she had lost her place in the world
the place that i was so pleased that she had kept
i, who had lost mine
when I was her age
i cried
i was alone against the white lab coats
who always were right