The Goddesses Men Made

I come from a land of seas and oceans and mountains and ravines and clay and sand

I come from a land where they're all addressed as goddesses, not gods, but goddesses

I come from a strange land 

I come from a land where the goddesses are plenty and the gods are few

What is so strange, you might wonder

You see, where I come from, the goddesses are the protagonists and the gods more often than not just a piece of a greater jigsaw, and happily so

And it's said, mothers and lovers and wives and daughters and sisters and teachers, they're all goddesses

Yet, the men of the land shiver in cold sweats trickling down their invertebrate spines, every time a woman has let her thoughts out loud

Yet, the men of the land, to make up for their missing spines, batter and bruise women every time they dare to grow a spine, smother their insides until their guts fall out, and their spine is just a bunch of bones in a body bled out of blood

And for years, I questioned myself, why this strange dichotomy

You see goddesses are like weekends, their stay is short-lived

While women, women are persistent, unwilling to give up on their ideas of existence and being

You see godesses are made of clay, faith and fairytales

But women, women are blood and bones, every inch real, every voice loud enough to not be able to play deaf to

You see goddesses are worshipped, for goddesses are superheroes

While women are lived, for women aspire to be just women, no capes no wings, just an indomitable desire to be the women they are

You see goddesses are an idea, and ideas don't complain or fight for their worth

But women, women are chapters beyond the novels and words beyond the poetry, who aren't limited to paper existences, but skin and teeth breathing fire and passion like an everyday

The men made goddesses so they could be goddesses in temples and prayers

While the same men lynched women on the streets for they are no goddesses

The men made goddesses so men could tell women that they worship women, albeit in fiction

While the same men shoved their penises and opinions down unconsenting vaginas and throats of women, in daylight truth

Goddesses never were women, never will be women, just a faceless, meaningless abstract

Godesses are but, mansplaining women to the world by men pretending to be gods