Some pieces of writing have been sitting in draft form for a while. I am always unsure whether to post things this as they don’t paint an accurate picture of where I am currently in life. This poem was written nearly two years ago, at the very beginning of my activism journey. It was a time of intense self-reflection and processing of unexpected grief. Shame was still an unwelcome and persistent visitor as I starting to speak openly but I was receiving a few negative reactions. It felt like teetering on the edge of a cliff. I nearly gave up on my ideas and aspirations but I didn’t. I had a tremendous drive to move forward to the next stage in my life that I couldn’t ignore any longer. I was just on the cusp of ‘learning to fly’.
Her body is a temple
she looks after it well
tending the tendrils of shame that shoot from the shadows of her soul
she feeds it often with words and phrases
that she files away
even though she knows that she shouldn’t.
The why didn’t you say anythings?
and what did he do exactly?
the it’s extraordinary comment
said with the eye that can’t meet hers
on that final ending in the park.
She accumulates shoulders, cold and backs turned
she measures all the lost things
with care and great thought
and mixes all this with the pull of her womb that twitches in response
to that
that touch and
that day
and pours the rich tincture
not spilling an ignorant drop
and sits back
to watch the black forest grow
huge trees with sad heads hanging
trunks twisted in grief, inconsolable
she knows what made them grow this way
desolate and barren
so tall that she cannot see the sky
no matter how high she lifts her head
she needs to learn to fly.
