Poetry by Ebony Gilbert

                ​ricky shore CC



Wear your Story 


My eyebrows look angry

so I must be.

38 year old,

double-spaced

eyelids 

hooding irises and pupils  

whose view have changed

like

my breasts, 

rearranged not once but twice, 

expertly marked and sliced. 

This wrist here, 

brailled in permanent ink, 

links

arms and hands 

who have wounded and caressed,  

undressed

the soft belly 

covering the part where

(m)other is stencilled on my womb, 

the baby’s room, 

the blank space between

my hips

that never really bloomed. 

With capital lettered “DON’T TOUCH.

We’ve felt too much. 

You just stay there where we can see you.” 

Who uttered “#UsToo.”

Who joined forces with 

time-worn skin pulled tightly 

over 

ashamed shoulder blades, 

curved by the decades. 

Paper thin

layers of calligraphy skin

stretch over my thighs 

who memorised 

stuff they’d rather not have 

and skim all the way down past 

bruisy shins. 

When slowly, 

slowly, 

those lashes rouse from sleep and weep,

and palm to heart, 

I ink a love note, 

wrap it around her like a coat.

“You are history.

You are abstract art. 

Each body part 

torn apart. 

This here is your memoir. 

If only you knew how exquisite you really are. 

I will stitch you back together. 
​
I will mend you.”

​
​

The darkly raw insides of a woman standing naked with a  kind of sincerity that hurts and heals.
Ebony writes what she feels.
Her poems are selfies.
Unprocessed. No makeup. No filter. @_ebonygilbert_

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