"Untitled" by Catherine A.G. Bayly

I am a body of deep royal sadness.


Tangible moving living breathing

The waves roll in

The waves roll out

Like captured salt brine water

In the sea

The wisdom sadness lives forever

Birthing swelling within me

Empty shallows of skin

Sandbars of golden wheat

Peeking from beneath hot bath

Breasts once teeming

Now empty and hanging across an almost boyish chest

Hands once trembling with the need to give

Now depressed and deflated

Holding nothing

Hips, spread and stretched

The skin peeled back - lashed red striations -

I have drowned in feeling myself a mother.