Eira Quinn

They told me about Noah,
but not the bodies.
Not the screaming
beneath rising water,
or the mothers
who begged God for mercy
as he watched from the clouds
and said nothing.

I heard about Job,
but they skipped the bet.
The part where God let the Devil
ruin a man's life
just to prove a point.
Killed his children.
Stripped his skin.
And called it
righteous testing.

They told me about Abraham's faith,
but not Isaac's trauma.
Not what it does to a boy
to see his father raise a knife
with heaven's approval.
Not the silence that follows
when you survive a god
who wanted you dead.

No one mentioned the concubines,
the raped,
the forgotten wives,
the daughters sold
for the price of land
or peace
or power.

They didn't talk about
stoning disobedient sons,
or killing gay lovers,
or what to do
if a woman is not a virgin
on her wedding night.

They said Jesus died for us,
but not that God
could've chosen forgiveness
without blood.
That maybe the crucifixion
wasn't salvation,
but spectacle.

They said "trust the Word,"
but they handed me
a censored book
and a list of acceptable questions.
And when I asked
about the rest,
they said
"have faith."

But faith without truth
is just fear
in nicer clothing.

And now that I've read
what they skipped—
now that I've seen
what they hid—
I can't go back
to coloring pages
and quiet amens.

The god they taught me
was edited.
Redacted.
Rebranded.

But the truth?
The truth was always there.
In the margins.
In the footnotes.
In the blood.

In the beginning,
there was a woman.
She bore life with her own hands
and fed the world from her body.
She built shelter from nothing
and filled it with heartbeat.

She was the origin story.
The fire. The flood.
The first word.
And they hated her for it.

Because how do you conquer
what refuses to be claimed?

So they called her dangerous.

Carved her voice into silence.
Burned her wisdom with her body
and named the ashes sacred.

They took birth
and called it a curse.
Took her image from the heavens
and replaced it with a man on a throne.

Because it was easier to kneel
before something that looked like them.
So they rewrote the beginning.

Said HE made the world.
Said HE breathed life into dust.
Said woman came second—
from a rib, no less.

And just like that,
the one who created life
was made into a footnote.

But some of us remember
the stories written in stretch marks.
The hymns sung in lullabies.
The truth buried in our bloodlines.

We remember
that God was a woman
before they rewrote the script.

And no matter how loud they preach,
how hard they pray to the sky,
the earth still knows
who made her.

You are not made in the image of a god.
You are made in the wake of a supernova.
A residue of ancient light
that didn't ask for meaning.
It just burned.
It just became.

The iron in your blood
was forged in collapse.
The calcium in your bones
was once part of a dying star's farewell.

You are what remains
after the universe
tore itself open
and began again.

We are matter that got lucky.
Got complex.
Got curious.

And now, you get to be here,
spinning through time,
writing poems on your skin
with the same elements
that lit the first suns.

If love were enough, I would choose you.
If lullabies could shield you from wildfires and bullets,
from headlines that read like prophecies, I would welcome you.

But the thing is,
I care enough to ask the question everyone else avoids:
Is love enough when the world is burning
outside the nursery window?

They call it pessimism.
I call it empathy.
They say I'm overthinking.
But thinking is the most loving thing I can do.
I won't bring you into this world just to feel whole
if it might leave you feeling broken.

Because it's not just about tiny socks and first steps.
It's about lockdown drills.
Oceans swallowing coastlines.
Water that sets fire in kitchen sinks.
Wombs turned into prisons.
Politicians who call it freedom
while trading away your future for profit.

What would I tell you when you were old enough
to ask why I brought you here knowing all of this?
That I dreamed of you despite the weight
already pressing down on your future?

That's not the kind of mother I want to be.

I want to give you more than warmth.
More than bedtime stories and birthday cake.

I want to give you hope that's real.
A planet that breathes back.
A country that doesn't turn childhood into
survival drills.

But I can't. Not now.

So I carry you instead.
In the ache I don't speak of.
In the names I never picked.
In the room I never painted.

And maybe that makes me selfish,
or scared,
or too soft for the sharp edges of this world.

But I know this much:

If I ever meet you,
in another time,
another place,
I'll tell you the truth.

I didn't choose not to have you.
I'm choosing not to
surrender you
to a world
that still hasn't learned
how to hold
what it creates.

Today we remember
the women who lived
inside someone else's rules.

Who folded their anger
into bread dough,
into laundry,
into prayers whispered
when no one was listening.

The wives
who called endurance love
because no other word
was permitted.

The daughters
who inherited silence
like heirloom china.
Delicate,
never meant to be dropped.

The mothers
who carried whole families
on tired backs
and called it duty.

History will say
they were quiet women.
But quiet
is something you become
when the world punishes noise.

So we do not bury them
with shame.
We do not call them weak.
We say their names
with the tenderness
you reserve for survivors.

Because they endured
a world
that left them very little room
to breathe.

Yet they raised daughters
and daughters' daughters
who began asking questions
the world had never allowed.

I like to think
they are watching us now.
Watching us speak
without lowering our eyes.
Watching us walk away
from the lives
they were forced to stay in.
Watching us refuse
the old instructions.

And I do not think
they are angry.
I think they are laughing.
I think they are clapping
from the far edge of history.

I think they are saying
"finally.
Finally
someone opened the door."

The audacity
to hand women a world on fire
and then ask us to raise children in it.
To call motherhood sacred
while stripping it of choice,
autonomy,
safety.

The audacity
to look a survivor in the eye
and tell her
her body is no longer hers.
That it belongs to the crime,
to the state,
to the violence that broke her open.

Imagine the cruelty required
to force a woman
to carry the echo of her own trauma.
To call it a gift,
to call it "God,"
to call it anything
but what it is:

an unthinkable violation
sanctioned by people
who will never bleed for it.

The audacity
to preach life
while refusing to protect the living.
To legislate suffering
and call it morality.
To demand women be both miracle and martyr
for a world that would not lift a finger
to spare them either.

And then,
after everything,
to ask us why we are angry.
Why we do not smile
at the weight they press into our bones.
Why we dare to say
"I will not bring a child into a world
that would treat me this way."

The audacity
is staggering.
But here is the truth
they cannot legislate away:

Any world
that demands such a sacrifice
does not deserve the children
it pretends to protect.