Elizabeth’s Monologue
One Act Play from July 2023
King Philip’s War, King William’s War, or another early one when White Death first met the face of The People. Autumn. Morning.
A battle has been lost. A thousand deaths have been had.
Elizabeth, sold to an envoy marriage, is now a Good Wife. She has wandered out in a trance after the Night of Great Sorrow. Blood soaks the soil. Gunpowder still cooks the air. Smoke continues to float thick across the land.
She has been walking all night. Through the town and then the forest.
Elizabeth finds the Sunskwa before her in a ditch. She is motionless and bloodied.
She finally stops, grief washing over her.
She trembles. She breathes.
Elizabeth: Hm… I wash my hair in the mist of the mid morning. My hands alit with fog, with bright silver air. I nourish the inner column of my being, singing, resonating, calling, striking the tune fork of my inner voice. Silver light imperfect. Lotus flowers, dahlias bloom from my hands and my feet. I walk on all fours, climbing crystal staircases to gods and goddesses on the highest platform of this multi-layered circuit of energy exchange. My mind, my body, my soul, climbing this gigantic tree and is hushed, supported, nourished, by the owls and the hawks, the falcons, who live in the nests dropping nestlings into nests and circulating air up and down the body of this great organism. I tremble, I shake, like a leaf of many in this tree of one, spiraling up towards ether and skies of plenty. Reaching into the upper skies for which we can only dance and jump and leap into moments at a time, touching the stars through the blanket of the canopy, of soft bedded leaves.
I touch thee, thou, that are of this land, asking for forgiveness, presence, witnessing as I will shelter to you, for I never wanted to wish pain or fear, loss, heartache, violence upon you. You are of the nature of this land, like I once was before I traded my wormwood and Goddess for something akin to power against you upon being sold to that man’s bed. You are the true wards, the stewards, the beings, the women, rapturous seers and wishers of this land. You believe in hope, in truth, and healing, and I hear you. Ravagingly, I hear you. I wish I could take it all back. I wish my men would stop killing, would stop raping, I wish my voice wouldn’t drown as they burn my sisters and mothers. I wish I had a friend.
How I would cradle your young, rinse away toxins, wash your hair in cool streaming water, flowing from the breasts of our mother, from her high peaks to our mouths down below. How I would press on the nodes of your back, listen to your stories, laugh with you, kiss your cheek, allow flowing water to reach you in every which way that it needs to. I would cast away the poison of my men’s bloodbath and fear-mongering, soothing the inflammation it has caused, boils of trouble and rancor and greed. For there is nothing I wish more could disappear than the fury of my men and their delusions.
And it is not only them, my dear. I fear the women of this town desire land and prosperity too. How do I explain to them how ravaging it is to the human spirit to lose their way of life? How do I stop a dust cloud of hatred from billowing over the land, from pillaging and destroying your people? I have never even met you. But I mourn for you.
May I speak to you, may I heal you? May I witness you? Seething tempests tempt only the ghosts who breed hate and chaos. True growing is met only with generosity. I do desire a covent, I do desire sisterhood, I do desire the wildness, generosity, and rapture of the deep celestial mother. I wish that she do meet thee, I wish that she do meet me. We cannot go on without you. I wish to forgive and foretell a brighter, more auspicious, more gentle colony. World. I will not even ask, know that I do reach to you with my heart with these words, you. You are honored, you are blessed, from all those in the universe. I will help. I will hold my power. I will hold the power streaming over my hands. I pray relief reaches your soul. I pray hope reaches your ghost.