Autobiography of Eve - Ansel Elkins


Adam and Eve 1909,Suzanne Valadon

Wearing nothing but snakeskin
boots, I blazed a footpath, the first
radical road out of that old kingdom
toward a new unknown.
When I came to those great flaming gates
of burning gold,
I stood alone in terror at the threshold
between Paradise and Earth.
There I heard a mysterious echo:
my own voice
singing to me from across the forbidden
side. I shook awake—
at once alive in a blaze of green fire.
Let it be known: I did not fall from grace.
I leapt
to freedom.
***

In this new century women are finally, finally throwing off those old snakeskin stories 
which wrote them as enemies or mere secondary characters in the story of the world. 
This century, sixteen years new, has and will see women around the world leap to freedom.