The woman the boy became • National Poetry Month

The woman the boy became

Born more brawn than most,
Born warm.
Born close to ghosts.
Born storm.
Born old.
Grew young.
You could tell she wasn’t from
The same place as the rest,
Born strong. 
Born wrong.

She grew.

Growing is what anyone would do.
Given the particulars
She knew what she knew
She was ridiculous. 
Born too smart and too dumb.
Born to hold the world under her tongue.

Don’t swallow yet.

She felt

All the things that others didn’t feel,
Or if they did,
They did a lot to conceal what the feelings were.

She felt skies and bricks and rain.
She felt it all
It made her fall
And weep beneath a crawling dawn
When everything was ruined; torn.

She felt ill.
But she felt still.

How many yous have you been?
How many,
Lined up inside, 
Each killing the last?

How many times have you
Seen yourself change,
Felt yourself splitting in half?

When does it happen? There in the moment?
Or when you look back and say
- that’s when my changing began?

Born hero.
Born freak. Born weirdo.

Born blind.
Born seeing.

Born man.

She stands.

The hillside beneath her is crumbling. 
The sky frowns.
The land wants to return to the sea.

She is food for the gulls and it’s humbling. 
But this is not all
That she was born to be.

All of the things in her life that have happened.
All of the changes.
All of the strangers.

All of the nights and the days in her heart
Have been present since the start.

You don’t learn.
You remember.

Born with it all in your chest.
Born first.
Learn last.
Burn fast like paper
Unless you’re wet logs.

Wet dogs shelter in her caves when they get lost.
Howl with her.

She has been touched without asking. 
Punched by a madman.
Drunk in a bad town.
When she puts her hands down
And feels what’s beneath
She feels all the grief
Of the world.
Lay a wreath
For the girls.

She will march
Till she feels the tarmac respond. 
She will die for our wrongs.
We won’t notice.

She is fire
And sleet and granite,
Space rock shattering the planet. 
She wants to stop it spinning in its tracks like a dumb child.

She will be prophet one day. 
For a moment
She soaks up all that she can
She will own it
This filthy body this life
The dethronement of all that was precious
In favour of all that is tepid.
Opponents mean nothing. She’s Titan.
Born of the first breed.
Born in the last days.
Frightened of nothing that bleeds. 
The more that you hate her
The less that she needs.

All of her childhood passed in a flash
When she woke on her back in a clearing.
Time to be me now.

How many yous will you carry,
Weeping and desperate to marry?
How many yous will you churn out?
Turn out the light for the night.
She has burned out but she’ll be alright. 
She is coming up.
Child of her time.

Red morning. 
Blood on the tips of the thorns,
And the awning is dripping
With all of our scorn. We were born in
Days that will fill you with porn and with boredom
Grey little faces march in the squadron to warsongs
Penned by cynical fiends,
The latest big hit that cements the routine. 
Sell us the download. 
And kill all our dreams.

She rises.
She will see through the disguises.
They stab knives in her thighs.
See the swell of her iris?
She survives.
She will run till the cities are vanquished.
And all the children are gods again.

by Kate Tempest

courtesy kaleidoscopetodd

listen to her read it here