Centuries pass. I am an older child in a family of orphans. My sister works as a midwife and I find the job unpleasant and unbecoming. She asks me for help and I do the bare minimum, excuse myself, and go clean the blood off my hands and clothes. I have my own way of making a living: beauty. Once in my childhood, a woman in town bought me a dress because she said rags didn’t suit me. She said it was an offense to see me wander the streets beautiful and dirty. As I aged, I still walked through dirty streets always confused that trash could exist in the same world as me.

I didn’t sell myself. I didn’t have to. The men working in shops offered me kindness in the form of free bread or meats. I didn’t have to work like my sister did. I was cared for by the collective. This felt natural to me. I earned food through my God-given charm and beauty. I brought a smile to faces. No one ever told me I didn’t have the right to eat.

There was a boy who wore silk and told me he loved me. He pulled me close to him I noticed there were birds in the pattern of his teal jacket. I never felt anything like it before. I never saw a color like that before. Someone saw us. But I felt no matter. Nothing overcomes beauty and love. I thought no matter. I am as precious to him as he is to me. And I am precious to everyone.

There was a woman in town with an inbred daughter that was going to be difficult to marry off. There was a woman in town who could no longer tolerate the idea of me existing beautiful and poor now that I was heading toward the age of marriage. And her campaign began. She was able to turn female jealousy into moral hysteria. She was able with little effort to turn the community of women against me.

The men knew it was absurd. But to say so would be to admit guilt. They were guilty of having their own sexuality, their own fertility. These things belonged to women now. The men in town stopped making eye contact with me. The men in town walked around me with a stern sadness. The men in town were going to be castrated; a fact they accepted with quiet embarrassment.

And so I made my way to the stage. It is appropriate that I have their full attention. I feel my throat constrict. I am hanging now. The stone facades of the building form a square made for crowding and I realize they were made for this. The architecture itself calls out for my public execution. Suddenly I have performance anxiety. Suddenly I want to speak. I look to the audience. They can speak now and I cannot. These are my final moments. Are there no words in it? What sense does it make to kill a healthy girl of 15? I look to the audience for movement. Their only intention is to watch me die. I was never precious to them. I was the trash in the street. I don’t want to see that so clearly. But I can’t close my eyes. No one moves. No one speaks.

I held out hope to the end that someone would rush from the audience and cut me down. If anyone had moved forward to do that the crowd would have stood in silent shock and watched. Instead they stood in silent shock and watched me hang. They stood still on their own good social standing. And nothing could happen but standing. Except for me. There was no longer any ground underneath me.

But no matter. It was just a changing tide of time. As life exists, so do I. But it was a painful lesson to learn. For lifetimes after that death, I felt that my only power was my sexuality. For lifetimes after that, I felt my orgasm was a kind of currency. For lifetimes after that, I felt that my sexuality was something to be given to another and that my core creative aspect was sexual. There was no joy in it. For lifetimes after that, I thought that fertility could only exist within a relationship. But now, for the first time in centuries, I see that fertility is inherent in being. And for the first time in centuries I see without fear that they can kill me and make up reasons later. I see that I am the creative force and the inherent integrity of my being goes on. And I see that you are a creative force and the integrity of your being goes on. And I understand why we’ve lived so long with the feeling of choking. The very nature of our being will not accept social standing. No matter how hard we try to stand still, we cannot help it. We are the creative force. We are wellsprings of fertility.