WOW -- by Hollie Mcnish My body is amazing I can almost hear her saying it As she stands naked at the mirror Hands clapping in applause to it Naked, bold and proud Her mouth open wide and round like Wow My body is amazing She is one year’s old and loving it Full belly sticking out, thighs like mini tyre towers And when she looks at her reflection she always shouts aloud like Wow. This body is so great! Gazing down now I try to do the same Ignore the plastic advert spreads That pass me on the way I say ‘my body is amazing’ Despite what some might say I say my body is amazing Despite the claims you make. The nip and tuck and cuts and sucks that fill my walk to work each day Enhancement ads and happiness will only come with curves this way and if I lay in front of you today Clothes dropped to the floor You’d prescribe me what I could have less and what I should want more of A tick box what could be chopped off with red pen ready hand aside your eyes deciding what to slice from lips and cheeks to bum and thighs The lines below my eyes you say I ought to peel or pull away My breasts will start to sag one day My breastfed baby there to blame She came into the world you say That’s great but now behold your face your saggy stomach, baggy eyes Stretch mark stripes you look and sigh: My eyes, tighten My legs, inject My thighs, cut back My head, perfect My stomach, flatten My breasts, enhance, Don’t smile, too much Oh God, don’t laugh. As you mark me like a canvas page in circled bouts of red I feel the need to tell you you might praise this skin instead Cos as you chat about corrections, your plucking cuts and lasers Briefcase stuffed with time relapses, scalpol led erasers I take up your red pen to my cheeks and mark two stripes on either side A naked painted warrior could be a sorer site for eyes cos I am ready for your battles now My body’s felt the worst No scalpol cut intense as that last damn push of birth And I have learnt with awed amazement what my body brave can do And now I’m marked like tribal tattoos with the tales my flesh went through But those stripes that line my saggy stomach mark me like gold And the folds by my eyes tell a tale just as bold My laughter lines are deeper now because I smile twice as much so if you palm read these first ‘wrinkles’ my life would light up. Your official position is that smoothness is queen but without any lines there’s no reading between them A storybook opening My life’s just begun and Once upon never plays If you cling to line one As you try to cover the living I’ve done As a human, a woman, and now as a mum But your red pen can’t rub out the night’s I’ve not slept, the parts that I’ve bled or the laughter I’ve wept, the baby I held in the stomach that stretched, the breasts that got heavy so baby was fed, the parties I’ve had out, the sleep I’ve missed out on, the dinners I’ve stuffed down my throat like a python, As you pile on the pressure to cover my life I wonder what on earth is so wrong with your sight. If my mind and my memory can tell you my tales Then why can my body not tell them as well? As our babies lie naked, Applauding their skin I can’t wait for their lives and their lines to begin.
Posted on: Wed, 07 Aug 2013 22:36:54 +0000
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