Invisible Women

Women & the Sky 4

The woman down the hall does not really exist. She is foam, moving between walls and into our noses and throats. Quite often, we can feel her in our bodies, moving things around. It isn’t an unpleasant feeling and we generally do not even mind. We know that the woman down the hall is trying to help us because that’s what she does. In exchange for a room for her to expand in, she offers us immunity from disease. She enters our mouths and ears and boosts our bodies with her magic.

We often wonder about this woman down the hall, why it is that she is the way she is, and she tells us that we wouldn’t understand, but that if we knew our folktales, she’s in there. She is the shadow that was left behind for our benefit, and whereas we are flattered — no honored — we can’t help but be sad for her, that she must live here, with us, when she belonged to a time so very long ago, a time of folk tales and magic and sublime fairy tales, a time without maps, a time of legends, and that she must endure this, just for us.