For My Sister | Manmade | Girl, Woman, Sun

I do not know Sarah Everard.

I have never seen her face, nor am I acquainted with her smile. I will never hear her laugh, nor ask her favorite colour. I have not yet been to London, nor strolled its streets at night.

I do not know Sarah Everard, yet she is my Sister.

I have seen the bruises on her face, and imagined paling lips scrape pavement. Crimson stains the well-lit path. I have heard her muffled screams, that sunk into cracks in the footpath and nestled there against the grey. I know she was wearing bright colours that night. I hope they weren’t her favourite. All the right things, still meager protection against protector turned predator.

The candlelight had hardly begun to illuminate London’s sorrow, when they stamped out it’s glow under heavy boots. Sisters in mourning, manhandled. Bruised and shoved against the pavement, mouth first. Policed. Stifled. Extinguished. We did not know Sarah Everard, yet she is our Sister.

We have seen our face reflected in hers. The shadow of candlelight remains in the softest gleam of tearstains and blood.

For my Sister, Sarah Everard.

For my Sister, catcalled. For my Sister, bruised. For my Sister, raped. For my Sister, murdered. For my Sister, silenced. For my Sister. For my Sister. For my Sister.

Words by Justyna Dutka

The men sleep soundly upstairs too far above the clatter of pots and pans to be stirred from their slumber. Then the men descend to gorge on their meal, as though they had made it themselves.

As though they had torn their own flesh, extracting, with some divine depravity, a single rib – now it is served up on a silver platter by invisible hands, to be sucked bone dry of meat and marrow.

Then the men melt into well-worn seats on the couch, gulping gluttonous swigs of beer. We stand at the counter sipping silently on apple cider turned jaundice vinegar. They smack their thankless lips and leave us with the washing up. Dishwater tears streak past dark stains which, for all our scrubbing, never lift from beneath our eyes.

Words by Justyna Dutka

Womanhood, with gentle waves lapping at the white shore of adolescence, pools at her feet, before receding languidly, tugging sand from between toes.

Scooping neckline painted peach fades to starkness of untouched breast. Where soft rose bloomed across her belly, now butterscotch brown melts against bright cream below. Backs of knees and tops of feet stained raspberry, sticky with aloe to soothe the sting.

Let the sun kiss every part of skin revealed, with nervous touch of young lovers, just shy of the innocence elsewhere concealed.

Let sharp tan lines soften and girl, woman blend as ripe fruit, cream in summer’s heat.

The tide comes in, slowly, surely.

Words by Justyna Dutka