Every canonization hides a secret tragedy.
For every woman remembered in reverence for cutting her eyes out
or slicing through her own throat to dissuade a suitor
or pulled out her tongue to silence her voice
for every man who put his own neck to the blade, walked through fire to make a point
stepped forward to take some unnecessary punishment in the name of God
for every single one of these saints, there’s a girl with visions in a cemetery
scraping her eye sockets clean with the broken beer bottle
some boy hanging by a noose made from a shirt wrapped around a door handle
a note declaring a holy cause clutched in his hand, another woman
bleeding to death from internal injuries, a coat hanger clutched in her hand
after purposefully wrecking herself so that she will never feel the touch of another man.
Every canonization hides a secret tragedy.
Holly Day (hollylday.blogspot.com) has been a writing instructor at the Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis since 2000. Her poetry has recently appeared in Hubbub, Grain, and Third Wednesday, and her newest books are The Tooth is the Largest Organ in the Human Body (Anaphora Literary Press), Book of Beasts (Weasel Press), Bound in Ice (Shanti Arts), and Music Composition for Dummies (Wiley).