- True. I feel scared. I’m scared of everything I do and if each thing I touch will die on me. I never realised being this old meant I would only have to answer to me. I don’t trust me.
- False. I feel loved. I know it but I don’t feel it. I ask about it all the time and try to make it logical. How can I expect that magic to fit into the formula I made from teachers who were not trained in this. It isn’t simple. The grown ups lied.
- Strange. I feel ok with dying. It’s the only thing I’m not scared of. If I left now then I would know I’d done my best even if my toolkit was only half full and the hand me downs I took were broken and not fit for purpose.
Becoming (The Body of A Woman).
Fill the garden with peach trees; make the air sweet, let it possess you. Dig a hand span down into the earth beside the roots. Place your self here. Wiggle your toes. Get the black grit beneath your toe nails. Let the insects scuttle around the hair on your feet. This is disgust; keep it buried. Smear the soil up the back of your legs, between your legs, clod it forcefully to your hips. It will stick here well. This is growth; tend to it. Grab a peach; bite. Chew with your mouth open. Let the nectar rinse down the channel of your collarbone, your breasts, your ribs. It is sticky, sweet, cloying. The bees will come. This is beauty; remember it.
Sophia Murray is 10% witch, 10% poet and 100% a mother. She is also not very good at Math so writes poetry instead. She has been published in various anthologies by Blood Moon Poetry Press, Mum Poem Press, The 6ress, Bent Key Publishing and Free Verse Revolution Lit. She has also been published in online literary journals Goats Milk Mag and The Cabinet of Heed. She lives in the North of England with her husband, children and her familiar - assuming the form of a small, angry terrier - in a house on the ley lines on the hill. Her first collection will be released November 2022 from Cast Iron Poetry. You can see more information about Cast Iron Poetry here: @cast_iron_poetry. See more of Sophia's work on Instagram at @sim_poetry.
