a poem by Amber Jensen
Find more of Amber’s work at dirtlifeofferings.com and follow her on Substack here.
On ravens, villains, and the audacity of taking up space.
I once watched a murder of crows sledding.
Not metaphorically. Not in some poetic interpretation of their behavior. Actual crows, lying on their little black bellies, sliding down a snowy hill beside a busy road.
They took turns.
One would slide, scramble back up, and another would take its place.
Cars rushed past. The world continued its business. And these clever, black-feathered creatures, so often cast as harbingers of death and misfortune, were having the absolute time of their lives.
They did not give a single fuck.
I’ve thought about those crows often.
About the peculiar freedom of creatures who have never been instructed to make themselves smaller.
A crow does not apologize for its voice.
A raven does not ask whether its feathers are appropriate for the occasion.
A Steller’s jay will steal the last hazelnut from your tree while looking you directly in the eye, dressed in a blue so magnificent it seems almost deliberately offensive.
And somehow, we humans, who have spent centuries assigning meaning to these creatures, have managed to miss one of their most compelling qualities.
They take up space.
Without apology.
Without explanation.
Without the slightest concern for whether their existence is aesthetically convenient to anyone else.
I’ve been assembling a Halloween costume.
Piece by piece, over the course of several weeks.
It began with a pair of black boots, fishnet stockings, and a raven mask. Then came a magnificent black faux-fur jacket. A corset, richly patterned with dark botanical designs. A skirt made of layers upon layers of black tulle, irregular and unruly, like something gathered from the shadows of an abandoned theater.
Each piece arrived separately.
And with each addition, something began to emerge.
Not quite a witch.
Not quite a raven.
Not quite a villain.
But something that could comfortably inhabit all three.
When I finally put the pieces together, my daughter squealed.
And looking at the photographs afterward, I realized something.
I could be her.
Not merely dress as her.
Be her.
The creature you secretly want to become but fear the consequences of choosing.
The woman who enters the room and makes no attempt to soften the edges of herself.
The villain, perhaps, but only because someone else has been allowed to write the story.
We have a peculiar relationship with women who take up space.
We admire them from a distance.
We celebrate them in fiction.
We dress as them for Halloween.
We call them witches and queens and goddesses and occasionally, when we’re feeling particularly generous, empowered.
But in ordinary life?
Oh, that’s another matter entirely.
A woman who occupies too much space is difficult.
A woman who speaks too loudly is abrasive.
A woman who dresses extravagantly is seeking attention.
A woman who knows what she wants is demanding.
A woman who refuses to explain herself is arrogant.
And a woman who does all of these things without appearing particularly troubled by anyone’s opinion?
Well.
There’s your villain.
History has always had a remarkable talent for turning inconvenient women into cautionary tales.
And perhaps that is why we’re so fascinated by witches.
Not because they possess magic.
But because they possess themselves.
Last weekend, my husband and I went on a date.
Our first in a while.
I wore those black boots with jeans, an open-weave sweater over a black bra, and my enormous black faux-fur jacket.
It was not a costume.
It was simply what I wanted to wear.
And I was almost certainly the only woman within a considerable radius who had decided that an ordinary dinner required quite so much black fur.
I noticed.
Of course I noticed.
But I didn’t mind.
And that small absence of discomfort was worth examining.
Because there was a time when I might have reconsidered.
Taken off the jacket.
Chosen something quieter.
Something that wouldn’t invite a second glance.
Something that said, Don’t worry. I know the rules.
Instead, I went to dinner.
In my ridiculous, glorious jacket.
And enjoyed myself.
No grand declaration.
No dramatic transformation.
Just a woman wearing something she loved without first negotiating the terms of her visibility.
I wonder how many of us have closets full of things we love but rarely wear.
How many have jewelry saved for occasions that never arrive.
Lipstick too dark for daytime.
Boots too tall for the grocery store.
Dresses too dramatic for dinner.
How many have quietly built wardrobes around the question, What will people think?
And how many of us have mistaken the answer for our own preference?
Halloween offers us a peculiar little loophole.
For one night, we’re allowed to become extraordinary.
We can be grotesque. Seductive. Terrifying. Beautiful. Unrecognizable.
We can wear feathers and horns and enormous skirts.
We can paint our faces and sharpen our teeth.
We can become creatures who would never ask permission to enter a room.
And nobody thinks much of it.
Because it’s a costume.
Because it’s pretend.
Because tomorrow we’ll return to our ordinary clothes and our ordinary lives, and everyone can relax.
Which makes me wonder about the women who reach for the same costume year after year.
Black leggings.
Black crewneck.
A little eyeliner whiskered across the cheeks.
Cat ears.
Done.
And listen, if that’s your joy, wear the hell out of it.
But if there’s a woman beneath those whiskers who secretly wants to arrive dressed like the dark queen of an ancient forest, dragging six feet of black tulle behind her?
If there’s a woman who wants feathers and velvet and impossible boots?
If there’s a woman who wants to be frighteningly beautiful, extravagantly strange, or simply impossible to overlook?
What, exactly, is she waiting for?
Permission?
From whom?
And why on earth have we given them the authority?
I’ve been thinking about villains lately.
Particularly the women we cast in those roles.
The witches who live alone in the woods.
The queens who refuse to surrender their crowns.
The creatures who cannot be domesticated.
There is often a moment in their stories when someone offers them redemption.
A chance to become good.
To soften.
To sacrifice.
To demonstrate that beneath all that darkness lies a woman who only wanted to be loved.
And sometimes that’s a beautiful story.
But sometimes I want the witch to look at the offered redemption and laugh.
Not because she’s cruel.
Not because she’s incapable of love.
But because she has absolutely no interest in being rescued from herself.
Perhaps she likes the woods.
Perhaps she enjoys her solitude.
Perhaps she has spent a lifetime learning the names of things that grow in darkness, and she sees no particular reason to abandon them for a seat at someone else’s table.
Perhaps she is not waiting for a prince.
Perhaps she has plans.
I don’t think becoming more fully ourselves requires becoming louder.
Or stranger.
Or more extravagant.
Not everyone wants to wear a raven mask and a coat that looks like it was stolen from a particularly fashionable forest demon.
But I do think there’s something worth investigating in the places where desire meets embarrassment.
Where we find ourselves thinking, Oh, I could never.
Not because we don’t want to.
But because we do.
Because wanting it reveals something.
Because being seen wanting it might reveal even more.
And because sometimes the thing we’re afraid to wear isn’t the thing we’re afraid of at all.
It’s the woman who might emerge once we stop apologizing for wearing it.
Those crows didn’t need the hill.
They could fly.
Think about that.
They possessed the extraordinary ability to lift themselves into the sky, to travel above the traffic and the snow and the entire ridiculous business of human civilization.
And still, they chose to slide down a hill on their bellies.
Again.
And again.
Taking turns.
For the pleasure of it.
What a magnificent, unnecessary thing.
What an utterly extravagant use of being alive.
And perhaps that’s what I want to remember when I fasten my raven mask and pull on those impossible boots.
Not that I am becoming someone else.
But that I am allowed to enjoy the full, peculiar extravagance of being myself.
Without a practical justification.
Without an occasion sufficiently grand to warrant it.
Without making myself smaller so that someone else can feel more comfortable.
There will always be someone who thinks the feathers are too much.
The skirt too dramatic.
The boots too tall.
The woman too visible.
Let them.
The crows are sledding.
The ravens are watching.
Our daughters are holding their breath.
And somewhere, a woman is standing in front of her mirror, holding the dress she’s been afraid to wear.
Put it on, darling.
Elbows out.
Take a big, deep breath.
Be extra.
The world has enough women pretending they don’t want to fly.
