*{In 1968, the USSR took the gold medal in the women’s team gymnastics. The winning team had been forced by the coaches to become pregnant and then terminate each pregnancy at around 10 weeks to ensure that their bodies were at their most elastic and supple- if a gymnast did not have a boyfriend, the coaches impregnated them}*
Fundamentals
You shared a dream
a seed, of a life
more lithe, this lie
has me fluid, like wind waved water
a son, a daughter-
who will never breathe
or blink into this world to see
parallel bars or
cannula scars.
This leotard hugs my still warm breasts
hot with the sting of emptiness.
Your myopic vision, eyes on the prize
detours across my lips,
my thighs
I despise the act
yet swallow the fact
my body, newly pliable
defies the limits of your skies.
Tightness bending
chalk mending
strapped fingers
extraction lingers
you groom, assume
that we are hungry like you
we vault
your fault
and win for ourselves,
yet never stop losing.
***
Anneghem Wall is a therapist, researcher and mental health trainer, who also enjoys writing things too. Anneghem is interested in discourses of identity, mental health and distress and how these are constructed & experienced.
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