All Woman

This week’s post is a little different, as I’ve started writing more poetry again. I’m not about to turn this blog into a poetry recital, panic not, but once a month, I thought I’d make one of my poems, and posts suitable for here with a shorter post to introduce it.

After a mastectomy, (or two) people sometimes ask how I feel about my body now. 

“Can you ever be whole again?”

“Do you feel less feminine? Less womanly?” they wonder. They’re good questions, and ones I’m always happy to think about and talk about.
Breasts are still socially and culturally in the West a fairly taboo subject, a woman sunbathing topless is still a talking point for prudes or voyeurs (and deemed mad if in the UK, it’s too cold for that, Love). Showing a breast on Facebook is one of the only things that can get your account suspended it seems. 

It’s complex topic, and different for each person’s situation, but I know I insisted on touching my scars as soon as I was able, and I know them well, for they’re part of me, and that’s important. You’ve got to own it, then you can accept it, get more comfortable with it. 

Move on to more important things, like making another cup of coffee.

All Woman

One minus some can still be one.

For I was all woman before, there’s pictures to prove. 

Where can you find my womanliness? You ask.

It is not in the turn of my ankle, length of my locks, 

Not the rub of my thighs, curve of my bum. 

You won’t find it in the flutter of my eyelashes. 

Not in painted or powdered makeup. 

Not in jewellery lying across a cool, alabaster collarbone. 

Not in my breasts, pendulous and heavy,

Filling that dress so well.

Not in coquettish laughter, or a button nose.

No, it’s not there. 

But you will find it in me. 

For I am woman.

It is all I know. 

Michelle Holding 2018