There are many ways to view a body
Shortlisted for the Creative Ink Poetry Prize 2023
Published by Tangled Locks Journal
‘Oh NO mummy, they fell down!’
said my three-year-old in the bath
pointing at my nipples, all stretched and
slumped like two tiny chipolatas, pink pellets
sagging slowly onto my small boobs like empty
zip-lock bags after the picnic is over. On a good day
I think, they did good! - these once-swollen power houses
pumping nectar to my babies, my glorious womanhood
oozing just everywhere, all milk and flesh and life
brimmed to breaking point, all luscious, lascivious
and pouring forth. On other days I hide them
hurriedly, these sad sacks hung out to dry,
wonder about those perky Insta-boobs,
all caramel skinned and tightly
cradled in tangerine bikini triangles,
flesh bursting with invitation (perky, but
not porn, promise) and wonder if that’s really
what my husband would like. He says he likes my sweet
little once-udders, still touched-out, still hidden under a bra
during sex, my one-year-old still sometimes lunging at them
laughing, teeth-bared, my three-year-old still sometimes flicking
their falling heads in the bath. But they grew my babies, these
baps, these boobs, these breasts grew my babies with these
wonky woman hips, this prolapsed pelvic floor, these
sags of skin rolling over a collapsed core, these
stretch marks, these pounds I can’t shift, this
blood I still shed, this tender back, these
battered bones, these nipples that fell.
This whole body. This holy, holy body.
An extra note
Oh, the joys of small children. There is definitely no honesty filter. This poem was inspired by this very moment in the bath when my then-three-year-old flicked my nipples and say ‘Oh no mummy! They fell down.’ I mean…
Well, she was right. I breastfed two (big!) babies for a year each, so my nipples aren’t what they used to be (sorry, TMI). But these seemingly innocuous moments can, if you let them, spark the entryway to bigger realisations, which for me in this instance was the unpacking of a whole host of body and sex issues that I’d had after the birth of my second child. Somehow the humour of the moment allowed me to reach for the truth of the message that I’d been needing to tell myself.
As women, we are (still) confronted with - and bombarded by - images of bodily perfection, even if the industry says it’s doing a better job to make everybody feel represented. And, as women our bodies go through a lot (whether you bear children or not). Around this time I sought some professional advice from a post-birth body coach as I realised I was caught in a slightly dysmorphic and impatient trap when it came to my body. And one of the things that really struck me was her saying that there are different ways that we can look at our bodies. We can see them as physical - flesh and blood and bones, we can see them as sensual - touch, sex and pleasure, we can see them as practical - active, mechanical and biological, and we can see them as spiritual - soul-holding, child-bearing, life-giving. As a person who has long been hyper-critical of the purely physical components of my body, this was a small epiphany for me.
And notice the shape of the poem (if you’re reading on a desktop) - a little extra nod to all those power-boobs out there!（• ㅅ •）
It was shortlisted by the Creative Ink Poetry Prize in 2023, which I was very chuffed about, and then subsequently published by the wonderful people at Tangled Locks Journal.