...Caesura...

She felt she had been 

   stepped on… 

No. Worse than that. 

That she had been 

stepped on   repeatedly. 

 

Rhythmic.

Again and again, 

like a metronome ticking away, 

except that in her case 

the ticking had been replaced 

by a never-ending stomp. 

 

So what had brought her here?

Certainly not her own womanhood. 

Nothing to do with the fact 

   that she was she. 

Everything to do with the fact 

   that he existed. 

No “he” in particular mind you. 

A universal “he” would suffice. 

Mankind…    “Mankind”… 

she hated that word.

 

As time passed, 

her wounds scarred over.

Scarred to the point where 

mankind hardly existed 

(and neither, for that matter, 

   did humankind). 

The yang in her yin/yank equation 

   had been erased. 

To be female and only female… 

What was that? 

What is it to be cavity 

   without filler? 

And here with her denouncing 

   that yang to her yin, 

she had also come to denounce 

   the womb within her. 

No man, no womb, 

no woman, no gender. 

A total nihilistic androgyny. 

Just where does love abide 

in such a barren world? 

 

And so, here she was. 

Caesura: an eternal stillness. 

Here in her world, 

it was always dusk. 

Darkness falling… 

Forever falling; yet 

she knew nothing of night or day. 

Here there was no promise of morning. 

No start-over;   no   redo. 

Only the continual demise of dusk. 

No dawn but that which was 

precursor to dusk. 

 

And if you visited her there… 

If you told her of the cyclic normality 

   of your own forgiven world… 

What was this but communique 

   from far distant planets? 

Planets which revolved 

each round one another. 

Interdependent,

yet oddly needful. 

 

How would she know of this? 

She, a motionless black orb 

strobing deep dark solitude 

in a womb of mutual denial. 

 

Yes (oh yes!), 

if she did not exist, 

then neither would he. 

 

Such pain 

annihilates us all. 

 

Ó04 Jack David Hubbell