A New Day A New Dawn

Dawn crept across the sky early that morning, as if foretelling that today would be a new day, the beginning of a new time, an exquisite era of new beginnings. Pale golds blended into brighter oranges, with tints of rose gradually spreading across the heavens. Just to stand by the bedroom window and simply look was enough to take one’s breath away. But turning around to look back into the bed chamber that had held me in its sway for many a long year now, was all it took to instantly banish all portents of something as wispish and fragile as the notion of freedom. What is it to be free? Huh, just a word, semantic games played out by male philosophers sipping tea and whiskey as they grapple with the meanings of moral terms, even while they themselves have no idea whatsoever of the huge import of the concepts they play with. These words of theirs are male words, having being coined and caged eons ago by likeminded men with little else to do except entertain themselves even while their physical and emotional needs were met by the women who stood behind them.But this morning — this beautiful, beautiful morning which was a gift from the Goddesses that Be, a gift to all the women who stood at their windows and looked and yearned for something more, something richer and fuller and more meaningful than this small life that was spent and dispersed in bits and pieces in serving all those who somehow felt that they had a claim on the female spirit — this day would be different. Why, I couldn’t say, except perhaps it had something to do with the news circulating around the town that a certain Captain Ebony Wilder was back!! And this time she was calling to anyone who chose to listen, calling them to come, follow her and find the elixir of life and love and creativity somewhere in the midst of a forgotten and lost civilization. Something stirred deep within when the call reached my ears, causing ripples of vibrations to resonate with my heart blood as it ran though my veins. The very air seemed to tingle with possibilities of something more.

And so it was that on this day I chose not to put on my corset, or any of the clothes that had bound me for as long as I could remember. Instead I took hold of the boned contraption and began to pull and tear at it, ripping it apart from seam to seam. And then a most wondrous thing started to happen. From the hidden depths of the tiny invisible seamed stitches fell out the most amazing symbols and images. What they were, and what they were meant to signify was beyond my understanding, yet somehow I felt that Capt Ebony Wilder herself would be able to enlighten me when the time came. Gathering all the myriad pieces up I pushed them through the tiny opening at the top of a perfume bottle, rather appropriate I thought. Next I pulled on a plain shift under which I wore a pair of old trousers, all well hidden by a red handspun woollen cloak. The last image anyone had of me on that fateful day, in that town that had holed me in all my life, was of a red shape disappearing down the wharf and running and jumping on to the ship called the Calabar, dropping something that looked like a tiny bottle into the sea as she leapt into her new and unknown future.

Soul Sister