Words to My Fifteen-Year-Old Anorexic Self by Katie Metcalfe

You are squashing a lone branflake against the side of your cereal bowl, as you sit on bedrest in a children’s psychiatric hospital. You must extract from the flake as much milk as you can. You’re sure the milk is blue top, the full-fat one, and you don’t want to ingest any of it because tomorrow is weigh day and gaining anything will mean you’re losing control and getting fat.

Nobody Tells You by Nina Vangerow

Too Scared to Hold You Anonymous

Nobody tells you
and you wouldn’t have believed it anyway
not about the pain of childbirth
but the agonising pain of having the very essence of who you are
ripped apart
about endless days
and endless nights
having to survive on chocolate biscuits and bananas
because you can’t prepare food one handed
about babies that will never fall asleep in car seats while you are driving
but cry
because they need your closeness, your warmth, the smell of your skin
to feel safe
and your heart brakes on the motorway, tears streaming down your face
“It’s alright little one, mummy is here, just a bit further”
nobody tells you about babies
that need to be carried to fall asleep
carried to stay asleep
carried when they are awake, need to be as close to you as possible
to survive in this scary crazy world

No Escape & Other Poems by Marie Herbert

 

She Wasn’t Ready Illustration by Clare Hansford words by Carmen Marcus

No escape

I wanted to save you
before you were born
when you were still safe inside
I could taste the paint on the walls
the fumes of the cars
so, I held my breath

but still
the bitterness
of the world lingered on my tongue
even though I kept my mouth shut tight.

The Tight Red Rope by Emily Tempest

The Bath by Clare Hansford

Memory. This is a memory. I think.

I am in the shower. I tilt my head back to wet my hair. Steam gathers on the glass, fogging my view. Along the landing is my daughter, watched by her father. Her downy head and greedy mouth. I find parts of my body I used to know and wash them tentatively as though they are someone else’s: I fit together differently from before.

Skin to Skin: Call out for Submissions of Flash Fiction / Micro Memoir

What do you see / feel / think / hear when you see this image:

It’s called ‘My World is Small’, an illustration by the incredible artist Clare Hansford inspired by my poem of the same title.

We both had our babies at the same time and we wanted to break the silence about the isolation and intimacy of early motherhood. That intense period, known as the fourth trimester, where the baby still craves the warm, wet safety of the womb.

So I wrote poems and Clare made illustrations in scraps of time we stole between feeds, naps, nappies and argh-moments. Now it’s ready as an exhibition to share with you and it opens in July at Python Gallery and we want you to be part of it.

You can read the full story behind the exhibition being born here Skin to Skin: The truth about the fourth trimester.

So if you can’t make the real life exhibition because you don’t live nearby or you’re in the fourth trimester right now and haven’t yet worked out how to leave the house (we’ve all been there) we’re sharing this sneaky peek at this artwork and we’d like you to send us your flash fiction, poetry or micro-memoir in response.

• You don’t have to be a mother or a woman to respond.

• It doesn’t have to be about the fourth trimester it can just be your response to the image.
• It can be anonymous if it’s too personal.

A few guidelines:

• No more than 500 words
• Submissions in 12pt Times New Roman, word document
• We know you wouldn’t, but no hate please
• Deadline: 30th June 2019

Selected work will appear in a booklet alongside the exhibition and will be shared here on The Book of Godless Verse Website.

Please send your responses to carmenellen@hotmail.co.uk with the subject heading SKIN TO SKIN FLASH

We can’t wait to read your work!!!

The Exhibition

Skin to Skin will open at the Python Gallery in Middlesbrough from 6th July and run till September.

Skin to Skin: The truth about the fourth trimester in words and pictures

Yeah, of course I read about the fourth trimester before the birth; alongside some other stuff about routine, sleep training, soothers and pelvic floor exercises. It said human babies are born before their bodies are ready to survive outside the womb so they still crave the dark, wet comfort of the mummy-house. ‘That’s fine’, I thought. I can handle that. He’ll probably just fancy a cuddle before going to bed every night at 7pm in his side-by-side crib. I even thought: ‘Ooh, that sounds quite poetic’, before the actual red screaming reality of it.

NOTHING prepared me for the raw and brutal need my new-born had for my body: my breasts, my skin, my breath, my heat, my heartbeat – even my bacteria – he wanted and needed them all to survive outside of me.

That’s what skin to skin is. That’s what it means. Not just the placing of the baby straight onto the mum at birth, that first contact is just the beginning. Skin to skin means total surrender of self. Total.