A deaf threat closes his palms on our neck, we try to swallow a breath of air but we would say that we are drowning. “My lips are sealed”, how to say what happens to us? In the “crumbs of a sacrificed “I”, how to free your speech? The poet Maud Thiria made in her short but powerful gap the choice of a universal “you”, which contains “an experience for everyone”. Domestic violence does not say its name but the important thing is the loss of breath, the devastating plunge into this mysterious “form of abuse of the female body”, its during and its after.
You probably have to cut yourself into pieces to overcome the thorns, dissect yourself to get rid of the sticky remains of violence. Here is Maud Thiria at her scalpel, slicing large pieces which she numbers: cut 1, cut 2, cut 3, cut 4. She spreads out: “You shreds /of bodies /unknowns misaligned recomposed /ghosts of beings /memories wanderings of others /forms /inside” 255 ; “bulging veins / flowing juices / lost sea / dead red”; “you detached / cut out undone / pieces of you / exploded here / you multiplied / echoes of the faceless / daring by your mouth / to say no / by your non-mouth / to say”.
We follow, with a little twisted stomach, the journey, both epic and disarmingly simple, of the trickle of air which tries to make its way through the trachea and succeeds. Maud Thiria saves us from asphyxiation, and it is also the trajectory of force, the triumph of that which we have not succeeded in annihilating. “Playing Dead” come back to life.
The extract
(of cut 2 – towards which word to tender)
your mouth shut
of son
you the fisherwoman
guilty sentenced
to lick your own tongue
to spit
your closed words
behind the wall that
bouche
in view
your dying words
on the glass
dying of cold
under the biting ice
broken
vitreous vitriol