“know how grateful women are that you, Athika, are who you are.”
They sow words to shrink us: overbearing,
troublesome, bitch –
their sad currency of swipes, faces in darkness,
splinters of spite. Those words:
Hysterical, mad harridan —
like endometriosis — all the bloody
cells of hate migrating.
We are undervalued, side-lined, downtrodden, trolled,
stalked, hounded, harassed, vilified,
Murdered.
We who survived the burning times.
With our painted smiles, we are pretty dolls,
temptresses at barely thirteen, force-fed lies.
They call us underage women when something’s at stake,
when girls or children would incriminate.
We are girls when fully fledged woman scares them,
when we refuse to bend, refuse to smile
but the fuse is sparking
electric.
We are ungovernable embers. We are exotic fruits.
We will always be here, telling our truth.
They want to give us a day they say — 24 hours of praise —
then they bare pointed teeth. We are valued only
by the shape of our hips, these gates shut with chains
that they will hammer open.
Still, we stand.
They call us witches: flesh so repulsive, they never stop
talking about the stench. But remember: a woman birthed
you. Gave you life. We descend from silenced
healers, caretakers, timorous creatures walking in shadow,
gathering courage from flowers, blooming like magnolias.
We are furious magic. We are Shapeshifters.
We are the noise that starts when whispers fail,
More powerful than the syllables of spite they spit
when night snakes its way around their necks.
They call us woke when we sing our sisters time in the sun,
stand by them rather than standby, Sisyphus calling
out Zeus. Their language is not mine.
They do not care for our blends, our depths, our agency.
They call us only womb, vessel, man-haters, rape-faker.
They call us Qamar, a borrowed light.
We are mouths full of feathers, taught not to spit,
dragging pain by the hair across generations.
Taught to stay quiet in the face of violence,
to close our mouths not our legs,
to shrink when threats are large.
Cut
our autonomy from our anatomy,
tell us to stuff our bleeding
racket with silence – I’ll show them hysteria
when I’m in the ground laughing.
They do not know we are sweet peas: the more they cut
us back, the stronger we grow. Tear their words
to little pieces, throw them like confetti.
They call our kindness a stain,
ond mewn gofal y mae grym,
yn ei goddefgarwch hi
y mae’r gân.
Don’t tell me who, what or how I am…. I AM.
We are ecstasy-filled earthquakes, we demand more.
Now our words are many voices in one throat.
We are the backbone, showing our daughters how
to celebrate each other.
We don’t exist for you.
Our thick skin stretches all the way back
to your mother’s arms, to your wife’s bed,
your daughter’s handprints
pressed into paint and palmed onto paper.
When I stop, and listen, feel my skin, hear my breath,
I think of all my foremothers, and yours
making us possible. Find your ground. Hold it.
Embrace the murmuration, of women who weave
bowline knots. Secure the line. We are flowers
that have known the weight of drought
and still dare to bloom.
There are tides in us they will never draw back
but the moon guides those lost in the dark.
Strongly stitched,
we knit
into and out of one another.
When the sludge threatens to weigh us down, women like Athika rise.
Words By
(in order of appearance)
Sophie Herxheimer
Emma Baines
Allison Hulmes
Adele Evershed
Rebecca Parfitt
Natasha Gauthier
Wendy Booth
Cath Little
Jennifer Powell
Lesley Herbert
Kit Habianic
Gemma June Howell
Jane Campbell
Rebecca Lowe
Anna Sherratt
Abi Norton Morgan
Mari Ellis Dunning
Zoe Brigley
Alice Willitts
Aileen Angsutorn Lees
Rhian Elizabeth
Alice Nuttall
Catherine Taylor
Jemma L. King
Julie Richards
Lucy Aur
Jane Killingbeck
Beth Edwards
Sophia Argyris
Lauren Middleton
Catrin Mari
Gail Webb
Christina Henneman
Llinos Dafydd
Carolyn Thomas
Karen Pierce Gonzalez
Leigh Manley
Sarah Rowland Jones
Emma Smith-Barton
Mary Kaye
Hanan Issa
Natalie Ann Holborrow
Jade E. Bradford
Ansa Memon
Rebecca Parfitt
Hannah Gathercole
Bethany Handley
Durre Shahwar
Rakyah Assam
Casi Wyn
Gwyneth Lewis
Ness Owen
Amanda Lyon
Tracey Rhys
Gosia Buzzanca
Sarah Persson
Sifani Hassan
clare potter