Penny

Grey, elephant grey, warm, brownish grey,

Grey that is warm, calm, soothing

An undemanding grey

Calm, like a cloudy sky, one of those days that asks nothing of you

I could wrap myself in grey – all the colour drained out of my life right now –

I have no energy for colour, I wrap myself in soft warm grey and it is quiet, calm, soothing, like old bathwater, like puddle water, like a cloudy sky, like the dull sea, like all the grey jumpers I buy over and over and wear over and over A grey that says nothing, because there is so much going on, because my entire skin is full of grief, full as a heavy rain cloud, full as a water bag, saturated with grief there is no room for colour.

All the blue sky washed out with grey. An ink wash over everything.

It is boring, dull, sad, depressive, but also warm and quiet and soothing.

Grey feels like all I can manage, but also like a medicine of quietness, of not asking anything of me right now, feels like permission to be sad and quiet and tired, and recovering (if ever) slowly and in my own time. Elephant grey, like a hug from a warm, friendly trunk.

Oh these old run-down houses, a little block of dereliction. I would like to explore more. Around them, the city bustles, green parks flourish, blue skies and bright sunshine, noise, people. Here, this is a patch of quiet, of grey, of abandon and isolation. This is how I feel in the world.

There is also a quietness here. Does quietness have a feel, a texture? The snow is crystalline, cold, crunchy and sharp as seasalt, the sand is sun-warmed, gristly, crunchy, and sharp like seasalt.

The lake, the water is smooth, still, cold, like velvet, thickly viscous, clear, refreshing, making me breathe deep, it smells clear and oxygenated, I want to walk into that water, up to my thighs, up to my armpits, immersing my breasts, my heart going under water, until I am held in that heartbreakingly blue stillness enough to cry, to let the tears flow onto the surface, completing the cycle, returning that heart flow back to the water, the mother’s womb waters.

The stillness, the quiet, allows the bleeding flower of my heart-hurt to open into the blue, and stream tears of grief into the river of life. I breathe deep, into the grief, help me breathe, over and over, help me be here in the stillness, the quiet of it all.

Oh, this lovely lady, holding her lost breast. I would like to stay with her longer, feel her feelings. Around her are people who know her but who struggle to understand, this is also a protective gesture as people bump and jostle her, try to pull and push her along in life, or leave her alone entirely, and that hurts also.

Is there a strong, calm, caring hand on her back? A presence, standing beside or behind her, supporting, protecting, loving her? Is she alone? And are there children grasping and clamouring that she must protect herself from. And do any of her daughters make her a cup of tea, bring her a vase of fresh sweetpeas from the garden, massage her shoulders with soothing words and oils?

Oh, you are Isis Wounded! You are the Goddess! Only, instead of breastfeeding your son, the god, you are holding the place where your breast used to be, and is no longer. I have not lost my breast, but I have lost myself, the self that inhabited that unwounded breast, in the ‘wide excision’ I have been excised, removed, carved out of my own skin.

Did I come here to worship, are you a temple of your own? Is there now a temple to Breast Cancer, a Goddess of the Mastectomy? The opposite of the Amazonian, a Wounded Woman. I would sit with you, not the same as you, but in the vicinity of sameness. I would light candles and wave incense and pray to your image – make me whole? Or – it is you who understands me – hear me in my woundedness, my softening.

Is this hurt, this wound that you clutch and hold, is it the physical wound of the cancer, the surgery, the medical issue, or is there a deeper, less visible, less tangible wound? Did you also suffer from an insecure attachment, a mother wound, a loss of the love most needed, is there, in our breast, a young child, the very youngest, in need of such love and care as we feel for our breasts as we lose them, as they are wounded and removed. Is there no cure for such a heart/breast wound but to remove the pain like a cancer which grows and continues to grow until it eats up all else, all good healthy tissue, all healthy life, and takes over completely.

…

And who does hold you and support you? You, she is carved in stone, she is alone, she has become the idol, the goddess, the holy image of the mother-wounded woman, the breast-hurt woman, the lucky winner and victim of modern existence and modern medicine, the power of absence, of excision, of removal, the power of grief and of giving away one’s womanhood, or of having it taken away unbidden – and we hold our hurt and clutch at what is left of us, itchy and aching and uncertain of what we are now – what does one breast mean, what is a wounded breast – and where does sex go and sexiness and beauty and womanliness and all that…

I see all these pains in this one gesture; holding, tender and painful, loving and protective, hurting and needing, chin tucked down towards that place, hands placed clutching, holding over – not the empty breast-space, my love, no – but over the wounded heart.

My Dad Cried Tears Today

My dad cried tears today,

Crumpled face a crumpled leaf

On the white sheet

He has fallen from the tree

An old, withered fruit

I massage vitamin E cream into his feet and legs

To hydrate his bonedry bonewood dryleaf skin

And I think of my own skin

Oiling the skin of my breast every day

Oiling the rope coiled scars in the soft ripe fruit of my breast

Keeping it supple

Paying attention to the long suffering wound that

Keeps hurting, aching, itching, tingling

Coiling up tight inside like a rope

A rope of tears coiling

But i am still young enough and juicy soft skin,

My breast like soft ripe fruit

With a little cut in it, a little scar, and a long scar

A snake around the soft fruit

Fallen from the tree

The old dry tree

My dad an old

withered branch now

Its last life distilled to a few drops of tears

All the moisture drawn inside and then poured out, squeezed, expressed

And tears come out..and made me

Soft in the heart like the rot of warm autumn apples

And tears came to me too, sweet and fermented,

spiky with wasps.