by Mariam Saidan
After Audre Lorde’s “A Woman Speaks”
I have been woman
for a long time
youth was fragile
scary at times
most of the times
nonadjustable to
the shape I was becoming.
Misunderstood I was.
Out of mind, troubled
when I didn’t quite like
the safety of home,
control or harassment.
I died many deaths
each time returning
with a new survivor in me.
Fear no longer suited me.
I’ve grown into a
thousand-year-old tree.
They cut a branch,
take a leaf,
it grows back.
It always grows back.
Try and take the sun out
of day.
There are birds living in me,
one always sings,
and a fox curled up on the shed
just a stone’s throw away in
my garden, looks at me.
Under my living room where
I keep vases in different shapes
and colours, painted and
filled with wildflowers,
there’s a cellar
and below that,
an ocean,
pounding.
With every tide
I become water.
Offending waves.
Dramatic drops.
Vast freedom.
Bewildering imagination.
There’s no end to this thirst.
I’m not scared of pain,
it makes things interesting.
My eyes sometimes
look into yours,
but no, not asking to be
touched.
I’m here
to live this life
like no one but
the woman I have
become.
I’m not ashamed to
drown in this sea.
Mariam Saidan is a Specialist Advocate for Women’s Rights and has worked as a Children’s Rights Advocate, studied Human Rights Law at Nottingham University (LLM) and Creative Writing at Kent University. She is Iranian, based in London, and has lived in Iran, France, and the UK. She wrote her first journal at 8 years old while living through the Iran-Iraq war.
