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I’VE SCRAMBLED ON SLICK ROCK, hauled myself up talus slopes, I’ve hiked in air so thin that I could only take a few steps at a time, I’ve dragged myself around the perimeter of the cabin compound in which I lived, so racked by arthritis that each step took my breath away. And, as the news came in from Dallas, I remembered the hardest walking I have ever done.
The drumbeat pulled us forward. A woman threw back her hood. Then another. I took hold of mine and followed suit. The first instinct was to duck, as though the waterproof cloth had been a bullet-proof shield. We held our heads high. I felt the back of my neck, my forehead—the space where my heart kept time with the drum—as I’d never felt them before.
There were no shots. One by one, each woman stepped over the crosswalk that marked the end of the parade. We waited in silence for our companions. Ahead of us, the veterans did the same.
Only later did we women seem to find our voices. Our laughter. Our tears of grief, and of joy at being alive, at understanding a tiny measure of what so many in the world, and those men who had marched before us, might once have felt.
Terror. Shaky resolve. The real possibility of blood, of agony, of a friend’s brains splattered on your sleeve. Walking point in a real war. Over and over again. In step with your companions. And from now on, any of us who step out in a peaceful march will walk with that same not-knowing.
Source: matadornetwork.com