the blacksmith

poem

I am the blacksmith and the poet,
I am the maiden and the crone
I am both cure and ruination,
the womb and the fatal shot
I am the god I worship,
and the heretic I burn at the stake
I am all the saints you keep framed in your vanity
and the thief looking through the drawers herself.

✧

About The Blacksmith…

One of my favorite things I’ve written, The Blacksmith is a short little thing about duality, and the wide spectrum of the female experience. It came from a moment of introspection and confusion, as well as indecision. I started writing it last year but I did not make much of it since it felt more like a word dump, months later I dusted it off and saw something in it that I really loved, and since it’s now a personal favorite I thought it should be the opening act for the poetry I’ll be posting here.

what inspired me…

    the maiden and the crone

The neopagan deity The Triple Goddess (the maiden, the mother and the crone) represents the three aspects/stages of womanhood and the ‘feminine journey’. The duality of the maiden and her natural opposite; the crone. Despite not necessarily subscribing to this depiction of femininity (queue King by Florence and the Machine), I decided to adopt the idea that women are simultaneously the maiden and the crone at all stages of their lives, and are capable of tuning into all ‘opposite’ sides of womanhood and femininity.

   the god and the heretic

A self-inflicted sort of agony and simultaneously, salvation, found in oneself. Being your best devotee and harshest critic, friend and foe, feeling the brutal grip that everything girlhood taught you holds over you. 

There’s an infinite number of women inside each woman. The female experience, for me, is one that transcends culture and biology, a kaleidoscopic mist of everything and its opposite, a complex, beautifully horrific one, but that doesn’t matter,

what is it for you?

nicté x

(cover: The Demoniac (1893) by Joseph Middeleer)