En Colère

At Paris-Charles de Gaulle

Like a wildfire. It happens suddenly. She ignites. Ripped red from one end to the other. In an instant, a single word— the spark of a match, the grating kiss of two small knobs in the palm. Her mind, combustible. Once she was a cool forest—pale green, limp-leaved, too long dormant. Brush built up. For years, lacking a controlled burn. Now, only a spark— a scornful look, le mot insultant slipping from a pinched mouth transforms her soft body into a raging fire. Imbécile. Conasse. Tu m’emmerde. A girl, she would have blown over with the slightest gale crumbled, wept alone in the bathroom stall, bled like Persephone’s crushed pomegranate seeds. But the decades have hardened her. Beware—Medusa’s snakes intertwine in strands of graying hair. A sweet, gentle thing no longer. She is a full woman, despite herself. Her body has borne children, endured sleepless nights, ached, labored, a veteran of fierce battles: with men, with pain, la douleur, no stranger to life's cruelty Where in the body does it originate? This fury. Abruptly in the clenched throat, it appears, in the tightness between shoulder blades in the hot iron jaw in a growl of pain in the lower back. It lurches, breaks through skin, from the inside, claws through openings of scars, old wounds, shrieks with its gaping, gargoyle mouth Although it holds the threaded hand of shame anger is woven into her skin embraced like a burning crumb of coal, a hot little goddess She possesses the sharp tongue of a harried mother, no longer young. No amount of praying, kneeling, blessings of holy water will dampen it. She is a flammable woman. Attention, mes amis: If you bite her, she will bite back.