1.
The women I come from
learnt how to thicken their skin.
How to tan it, and beat it,
until inch by inch
it covers all those soft spots
we might have thought to share.
2.
The women I come from
never learnt how to bow their backs
so far that vertebrae fossilise
into constant arches
that creak beneath the weight
of someone else’s moral compass.
3.
The women I come from
learnt how to carry their secrets close.
How to tuck away their thoughts
into deeper shadows
until the faces we painted on
become the only ones we knew how to wear.
4.
The women I come from
have hearts cocooned in armour.
They are riddles without answers
twisted into people.
They are worriers, and they are lovers
and they are more fragile then they act
when they take all of what they are
and entrust it, to someone else.

I was a bit at loss for which poem I was going to chose to write a response to for tonight DVerse Poetics. In the end I chose ‘Dragons’ by Sarah Kay, one of my favourite poets, and a poem that I find a lot of myself in when I read it.
My favourite bit of her poem is:
Me – I was not born with enough fuel. My anger often melts into sadness, it will just disintegrate into shame or fear, my clenched teeth release into chatter.
I come from a family that very much takes the ‘Keep Calm And Carry On’ approach to life. In some ways it’s a fairly good ethos as it has encouraged me to stay calm in stressful situations and I don’t collapse into hysterics in the face of an emergency. Emotions get bottled up until the practical side of things is out of the way. I get it from my mother, who gets it from her mother. Out of the three of us I’m possibly the most outwardly emotional person and some of that perhaps comes from my love of writing since you have to make use of emotion when writing.
I had a couple of busy days so I’m now going to try and get through a few of the other DVerse Poets’ entries. I haven’t had chance to read through many of the poems from yesterday’s DVerse Event either so I’ll try and get through as many as I can tonight and tomorrow.
As always I love to hear what you’re thinking so feel free to leave a comment if you want. Other than that, happy writing and goodnight.
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