This begins with the body of a woman.

She is falling, upward gazing, through a sky who’d forgotten its tune.

I read the audio version of this post over here on my podcast. Tune in if you’d rather have the notes float into your ears than be soaked in through your eyes.

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I was feeding my horses when I first noticed the song float into my brainspace.

Where The Wild Roses Grow, the song by Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds featuring Kylie Minogue, followed me round. I found myself humming her, singing her out loud, whispering her tune, often only realizing so when I was already halfway in song.

I woke with the lyrics in my head and found them still present in the moments when drifting off to sleep. Days later, she remained the go to tune that my lips would turn to in the seconds they were left in silence.

Soon enough, I began to pay proper attention. After all, if this song was insistent on following me round, the creative powers that be must have a bigger plan for us.

I watched the music video from 1996, read more about the origins of the song. A murder ballad. A genre of music I reflectively understood to have heard but never thought to give a label.

A ballad itself is a narrative song. Santi Elijah Holley, a music writer and author writes:

"Murder ballads is what we call the sub-genre of music that comes from ballads. Ballads date back centuries, to 15th, 16th century Britain, Northern Ireland, Scotland… an oral tradition where people would take their local mythology, their local stories, their true stories, their crimes of passion, and tell these long, long ballads … these long stories.”

The migration of Europeans to North America saw the murder ballad evolve, from a predominantly oral tradition, to a written one that went on to influence early American blues and folk music and show up in many other places in the years after.

Part of why this took me so long to write was I found myself wrestling equally with a sense of fascination and repulsion. The music video is a work of art. The music itself, sublime. I was, am enamoured.

And as with all good art, Where The Wild Roses Grow touched a place of deep discomfort that for me that speaks to the everyday vulnerability of women in the culture and society we’re a part of.  An uneasiness I continue to look directly at and sit with, despite inward disturbance and lack of answers.

Shortly after, a second story slid into my mind. Skywoman Falling, the creation myth told by Robin Wall Kimmerer in her beautiful book Braiding Sweetgrass. A relief to think about in opposition. A story of indigenous wisdom that illustrates the responsibility that flows between humans and the earth.

I sat with the two, a murder ballad on one hand, a creation story in the other.

The idea of womanhood resting firmly in between. Of ribs, of soil, of bitten apples.

I thought about the creation stories I’d grown up with. What was it I needed to kill off, or to put it bluntly, murder, in order to live in the body of a woman of the form I want to be? That I want others to be free to be?

And in the same breath, what is it that I need to create, to step into, to breathe her into life?

This week’s poem was my adventure in playing with those two parallel forces. A little longer coming than usual, which feels understandable and appropriate for words seeking this path to be birthed back into life.

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Of Soil, Salt & Sea: Good Girl Falling

1.

This begins with the body of a woman. She is falling, upward gazing, through a sky who’d forgotten its tune. She forgets, as she falls, there was ever anything besides falling. She forgets, as she falls, there was ever anything except the feeling of reaching, and missing. She forgets, as she falls, there’s a purpose for a body, other than the purpose of surviving.

2.

Moments after dying, she is watched. Her eyes, deep pools of ink. Her body, a space between notes. Her insides, a vanishing. Her lips part in song, a whisper, tiny as an echo. Poured through the space between worlds. The distant and yet heard howl of the women within, a sign of a threshold uncrossed.

3.

It was the kelp that cradled her first. Arms outstretched. One became five, five became ten, ten became many. The expert fingers weaving salty braids in hair now moving as applause. It felt good to be held, even though she’s unsure what was holding. It felt good to notice, even though she’s unsure, what was noticing.

4.

The silent audacity of kelp, to move like wanton women. Who gave them permission to swirl and sway? Who gave them permission to flow with the current as though they, themselves, created it? The kelp laughed, heard her thoughts. She watched their chlorophyll hips let go. She felt her unwilling sides release as her eyes drank in and listened. She imagined- felt- the holographic imprint of unwanted, unconsented hands ungripping her sides, consumed by salt and sea.  She felt her body join the sway, a stingray, arching, and curling, arching and curling, a belly button moving, arching and curling, pulled by amniotic string. It felt good to move. To have nothing to lose. To be free to decide what to let go of and what to let stay.

5.

It was the stitches, the stories, that gave way first. The words bound up flesh. The connective tissue; connecting of cells, of time, of space. Connecting the intuitive and the imagined. Threads of generational weaving, of once felt future potential residing as physical memory in muscle. A patchwork, fibrous heirloom, the water dissolving words to ink, pages to blank. The water, massaging, releasing the tales trapped in flesh, to dissolve in the wilds of sea.

6.

Confused by the salt, unmoored by the movement, the Good Girl came out next. They watched each other, circled, The Good Girl and The Woman, circling and swirling, swirling and circling, a half mix of familiar and a someone you can’t quite place. From the Good Girl to The Woman, she handed back her rib, her fingers at once feeling for the hole of open flesh unknowingly unsealed at her side. In her palms, The Good Girl placed the dirt, adding stain to hands and feet, the essence of creation, to which she’d never claimed. In her spine, The Good Girl placed the Kauri, a tree of strength and courage. You’ll need this, she whispered softly, placed an apple in her pocket, and with that she sank away.

7.

It was the need for air that brought her to the surface. The body of a woman, upward rising, towards a sky busy remembering its tune. She lay on her back before a moon that hung unarmed, unprotected, defenceless, and not needing of defences all at once. She lay on her back, spine strong as a canoe, water gently undulating towards land. The woman felt comfortable in the silence and the darkness. To always need the lights on, she thought firmly, is a betrayal to a starry sky requiring black.

8.

This ends with the body of a woman. Her eyes, deep pools of ink. Her body, a space between notes. Her insides, a reckoning. She is walking, upward gazing, with a body that’s remembered its tune. Her lips part in song, a siren call, loud as an echo, splitting the space between worlds. The present and far heard chant of the women within, a sign of a threshold crossed. In her pocket, she reaches, takes hold of the apple. She bites, twists the stem, the pin of a grenade, pulls it out and flicks it, her barefoot feet a saunter as she slowly walks away. 

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