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254 judith mourns Bonnie Lyons Devout, comely, wise even rich, I was all these things but the defining word, the only one that matters is widow. As a virgin or a wife how could I have gone? What husband or father or leader would have permitted me? It was only because I belonged to no man no father, no husband. Did I kill Holofernes or did he kill himself when he threatened to have me in the morning and then collapsed into a drunken stupor, head thrown back beckoning my knife? I returned carrying his head carefully wrapped in the canopy of his bed and they exulted: the real self the enemy killed and by a woman. But later, no man ever invited me under the wedding canopy or even the bed canopy. If I had known that my heroism would unsex me, would cost me the swooning ecstasy of the piercing thrust would I have taken on my saving plan? In Judith 1–16, Holofernes, the chief captain of the enemy Assyrian army, threatened to annihilate all the children of Israel. After piously praying for God’s help, Judith determined to deceive Holofernes into thinking she was a traitor to her own people and to murder him instead. Reprinted from In Other Words (Pecan Grove Press, 2004). 255 ...

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