Readers, by Frieda Hughes

Readers

by Frieda Hughes

Wanting to breathe life into their own dead babies

They took her dreams, collected words from one

Who did their suffering for them.

They fingered through her mental underwear

With every piece she wrote. Wanting her naked.

Wanting to know what made her.

Then tried to feather up the bird again.

The vulture with its bloody head

Inside its own belly,

Sucking up its own juice,

Working out its own shape,

Its own reason,

Its own death.

While their mothers lay in quiet graves

Squared out by those green cut pebbles

And flowers in a jam jar, they dug mine up.

Right down to the shells I scattered on her coffin.

They turned her over like meat on coals

To find the secrets of her withered thighs

And shrunken breasts.

They scooped out her eyes to see how she saw,

And bit away her tongue in tiny mouthfuls

To speak with her voice.

But each one tasted separate flesh,

Ate a different organ,

Touched other skin.

Insisted on being the one

Who knew best,

Who had the right recipe.

When she came out of the oven

They had gutted, peeled

And garnished her.

They called her theirs.

All this time I had thought

She belonged to me most.

published November 8th 1997 in The Guardian