The art of cutting and stitching

My mother’s knife made the first cuts –
she removed my fertile light bulbs,
then stuffed my womb with shredded tissues.

Not cruelty, you understand, but failed
protection. Men have still hacked
and moulded. A chop, then extra plum pudding

for my breasts’ unevenly swung pendulum.
Another snip and twist for my goblin nose, dye
for my mouse-brown hair, sky-coloured glass

instead of the wince-green eyes I was born with.
Several broke my narrow hips to loosen
the bone hinge keeping my body closed to them.

Only in their minds, you understand, but the line
between thought and reality is far thinner
for some. None of this spoken aloud.

When she looked at the baby in her arms,
my mother saw woman, and the pain
of my whole life quaked through her.

She’d have stitched me a tail if she could,
the grace of a fish to leave her eggs
behind a stone and swim free.

That glint of silver, you understand, is not
the flash of her blade, but sunlight
glancing off those scales she tried to give me.

 Sarah James/Leavesley is a prize-winning poet, fiction writer, journalist and photographer. Her latest collections are Darling Blue (Indigo Dreams), an ekphrastic book-length poetry narrative which won the Geoff Stevens Memorial Poetry Prize 2024, and Blood Sugar, Sex, Magic (Verve Poetry Press). Website: http://www.sarah-james.co.uk.