I felt it.
In my skin as it crawled, strapped into wire underwear, as the hair grew on my legs and I hunched my shoulders to hide my body and the baggy jumpers that fell to my knees.
It lived in me.
As a teenager, the guilt, the fear, disposable, sweaty, smelly, sinful, regress back to childhood with your French-braided hair, horses and fairytales.
Thought I killed it.
When I roared my child out of my body and faced oblivion, I saw the shame as separate from me and found strength in calling it by name at last.
I knew it.
When I wed after bed and my breasts were for feeding my child but it was disrespectful, distasteful, don't let the old men see.
Confirmed it. I was forced to confront, I dove deep, lay in the dark of the shame and bathed in it. Pointed my toes to the moonlight, in awe of the tar of it. Felt it hot and sticky where I was coated in it.
I realised it wasn't mine.
When I rose from the darkness only to be batted down.
When their eyes wouldn't make contact with mine.
When the panic grew in my throat and my soul screamed no and I felt the shame try to claw me back, just one last time...
No.
And you're right about one thing, I am easy after all. Easy to love, easy to trust, easy to laugh with, easy to spend time with, I move my body with the ease that it is to be me, to be free. Free of the shame that so long lived in this perfect body.
So you keep throwing shame
And I'll keep being free
