"
Laurie Penny’s Saudade
There are more of us than you think, kicking off our
high-heeled shoes to run and being told not so fast
The best minds of my generation consumed by craving, furious
half naked starving-
Who ripped tights and dripping make up smoked alone in
bedsits bare mattresses waiting for transfiguration.
Who ran half dressed out of department stores yelling that
we didn’t want to be good and beautiful
Who glowing high and hopeful were the last to leave the gig
our skin crackling with lust and sweat and pure music
Who wrote poetry on each other’s arms and cared more about
fucking than being fuckable
Who worked until our backs stiffened and our limbs sang with
the memory of misbehaviour that was what it was to be a woman
Who dared to dance until dawn and were drugged and raped by
men in clean T-shirts and woke up scared and sore to be told it was our fault
Who swallowed bosses’ patronizing side-eyes stole away from
violent broken boys in the middle of the night and vowed never again to try to
fix the world one man at a time
Who slammed down the tray of drinks and tore off our aprons
and aching smiles and went scowling out into the streets looking for change
Who stripped in dark rooms for strangers’ anodyne dollars
because we wanted education and were told we were traitors
Who sat faces upturned to the glow of the network searching
searching for strangers who would call us pretty
Who bared our breasts to hidden cameras and fought and
fought and fought to be human
Who waited in grim hallways with synth-pop crackling over
the speaker system for the doctor to call us clutching fistfuls of pamphlets
calling us sluts whores murderers
Who crossed continents alone with knapsacks full of books
bare limbs clear-eyed vision running running from the homes that held our
mothers down
Who filled notebooks with gibberish philosophy and scraps of
stories and cameras to prove we were there keeping our novels and the name of
our children close to our hearts
Who were told all our lives that we were too loud too tisky
too fat too ugly too scruffy too selfish too much too and refused to take up
less space refused to be still refused refused refused to be tame
Who would never be still. Who would never shut up. Who were
punished for it and spat and snarled and they shook the bars of our cages until
they snapped and they called us wild and crazy and we laughed with mouths open
hearts open hands open and would never not ever be tame.
Sara, I’m with you in hospital, in the narroe rooms where
you have put off your veil to count your ribs through your T-shirt, short hair
and secrets and quiet defiance crying together that we don’t know how to be
perfect-
Lara, I’m with you in mandatory art therapy, where we draw
pictures of weeping cocks and are told we are not making progress-
Lila, I’m with you in a north London bathroom, watching
unreal maggots crawl in the cuts in your arms and listening to your girlfriend
drunk and raging through the wall-
Andy, I’m with you in Bethnal Green where you love ambitious
angry women with heart brain pen fingers tongue and you have a line from
Nietzche tattooed over your cunt-
Adele, I’m with you in the student occupation, with your
lipstick and cloche hat and teenage lisp drawling that there’s not enough fucking
in this revolution and we must take action-
Kay, I’m with you on the night bus, half drunk and high
dragging bright-eyed boys home to our bed, where we watch them worn out
sleeping and whisper that we will never be married-
Katie, I’m with you in Zuccotti Park, where a broken heart
is less important than a broken laptop is less important than a broken future
and we watch the cops beating kids bloody on the pavement for daring to ask for
more-
Tara, I’m with you in Islington where you have thrown all your
pretty dresses out of the window and flushed your medication so you can write
and write-
Alex, I’m with you and a bottle of Scotch at two in the
morning when you tell me that no man will make us live for ever and we must
seduce the city the country the world-
We are always hungry.
There are more of us than you think.
"
—
Laurie Penny’s Saudade, from Fifty Shades of Feminism
(via mollycrabapple)
