Brooke Forbes

Women’s bodies are torn apart on the daily,

in the news and in the streets.

They’re dragged through games and gambling,
Surviving violence and ridicule,
Pushed in one direction

then the next.

Women’s bodies are sold and owned,
Through histories and cultures

that shape our perceptions

of old ticking time and place.

They’re remade, restructured,

brought through the same unavoidable narrative

and compartmentalised in fading mantlepiece photographs.

Women’s bodies are toys.

They’re pulled like little rag dolls,
They’re picked up like puppets

with pigtails and painted faces,
They’re torn apart like a dog’s bone.

Women’s bodies are politicised and tormented;
Drugged,
Misused,
Forgotten.

Women’s bodies are taken

from positions of power

with a mighty thump.

Punished for ever trying in the first place.

They’re isolated and mocked,
Mimicked and downplayed,
Reminded of their position as the second sex.

And when we are ready,

we dispose of images of women’s bodies.

Our bins are lined

with newspaper stories

of their forgotten wants and dreams:

Pictures of women in long slinky dresses,

see through blouses and dainty pearls.

Pictures of women in kitchen settings,

upholding a never-ending suburban dream.

Pictures of women in lycra bikinis,

pushing tight against exposed flesh,

 objects for hungry eyes.

We live through women’s bodies.

We take their warmth,

their good nature,

their strengths and make them our own.

We take the stories of young women

and line them against stereotypes.

We take the stories of middle-aged women

and tell them their ambition in fruitless.

We take the stories of old women and

retell them for them,

preventing a reliable narrative.

When are ready we burry women’s bodies in soft soil,

deep with ancestorial lineage.

We plant trees on top and

hope the new life will somehow carry forth a better story

than what’s forgotten beneath.

We hope the roots will wrap around

aching bones left behind after a life filled

with longing and quashed ambitions,

thoughts of becoming powerful

only to be left to the rot.

When we are ready,

we tell stories about past women’s bodies.

We tell children and men

that this woman was pure,

this woman was righteous,

a prime example of rose-tinted feminine,

a woman of depth and spirit.

Pioneering,

we would say,

a leader of sorts.

It’s only at night that women can tell the truth.

Woman to woman,

ancestors visiting in the pitch velvet black of night.

When we are ready,

we dream of women’s bodies.

Speaking softly first then roaring deep into the night.

We dream of all the things lost

and all the things taken.

We dream not of triumph

or might or dominance,
But of alternative endings

and unlived stories

of connection and meaning.

Woven like dark tapestries

across skin types and body shapes.

When we are ready,

women’s bodies are set free,
From lives laid down for others

and backstories that no longer serve them.

Women’s bodies are released,
Into the ether

with lessons softly whispered,
And paths forward gently rewritten.

If only, we could catch them,

maybe just for a moment,
And hear the weight of generations ebbing forward,
Minds and wants and beings,
Now free.

Artwork: Colleen Wallace Nungarrayi, Dreamtime Sister