Everyone says you look just like me.
Let me tell you what that means.
They were choosing your colour
before you had even arrived.
Here is your doll.
Here is your kitchen.
You will learn to be good…

Because I am an English woman,
and I care what happens there.
Because what they do with women’s rights
ripples through the global air.
Because in the land of the free,
they’ve locked the clinic door…

There’s a rucksack I carry.
Invisible, but heavy.
It wasn’t packed in one go,
just a slow, relentless loading.
Not days or months,
but years of collecting…

I didn’t mean to cry today
not in the cereal aisle.
Not because of war.
But I thought about my boy,
his Spiderman pyjamas,
the way he skips when he runs…

164 years ago
the world was quiet
horses on cobbles
candles in windows
hands red from scrubbing linen…

You don’t have to roar.
You don’t have to rise with fists clenched,
shoulders squared,
battle cry ready.
You don’t even have to move…

She’d just come off stage.
A matinee performance.
Still had her makeup on-
bright eyeshadow, thick lashes,
tiny diamantés stuck to her cheekbones.
She was proud…

I got a compliment last week.
“You look amazing,” she said.
I smiled, thanked her,
said it was just my hair,
washed, dried,
worn down for once…

It’s 7:44am. I’m already tired. There’s one odd sock again. Never two. Who knows where that other one goes. There’s grated cheese on the floor and a child saying, “Can I go on the iPad now?” before I’ve even finished wiping the tears from that video of a mother in Gaza digging her baby out of rubble…