Risk, Courage, and Women: Contemporary Voices in Prose and Poetry

walking out

159 walking out Bonnie Lyons I know what you think: weak and disobedient vulnerable—duped by the wily serpent. Think again. Our life in Eden was an idyl— no work, no struggle, an unbroken expanse of pleasure, a garden of perpetual plenty. We were protected children, and I was bored. When the serpent told me eating the fruit of that tree would make me wise I hesitated like any child about to walk out of her parent’s domain. Had I foreseen that my first son would kill his brother— but who knows the future? Biting into the sweet fruit meant entering the world of time and death 160 Risk, Courage, and Women adventure, change, possibility including the possibility of murder. I chose life. I would again. Do you wish you were never born? Do you wish to be a child forever? Then celebrate my wisdom. Reprinted from In Other Words (Pecan Grove Press, 2004). ...