A woman with a gun
Driven out. Cast out
by her neighbours
because she was killed internally
and could feel nothing
but pain and disgust
and because they too can
no longer believe who she was
at home, in the paradise
before the arrival of the men
who use you cruelly
until they discard you
and impale the broomstick
grandma's cane, their bayonet
or a bullet in you
The woman with the gun
wants to sleep again, to feel
the warmth of the sun again
She wants to defend
a new paradise, being awake
from the nightmare
of inhumanity
and free herself from the cage
of her broken body
Relief on the grounds of the Soviet War Memorial, Treptower Park, Berlin
"Our Bodies, Their Battlefield: what war does to women" (2020, Christina Lamb)
Collection "Bruises"