All The Lost Things

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.

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