Here was one who breathed
who laughed
who yearned.
Who birthed.
Who fed.
Sweated in the heat
and shivered in the cold.
Gazed mindlessly at supermarket shelves,
decision fatigue closing in.
Who ironed and refused.
Who burnt a few dinners,
triumphed at the pav.
Here was one who yelled and stressed,
cried tears of joy
— often.
Encouraged.
Heaped scorn.
Played favourites.
(And was one.)
Who fucked and came and loved.
And, above all, was proud.
Arrived in a sac, left in a bag.
Not defined by nothing.
No flame,
nor universal bounds.
I love life.
Here was one.
(Vale B.E.H.)
Download a pdf of ‘Here was one’.
Victoria Brookman
Victoria Brookman is an activist, feminist and the organiser of the Sydney International Women's Day March. She has two kids under four and is doing a Master of Research in English & Creative Writing, examining the clash between motherhood and capitalism. In her spare time she has written a novel about suffragettes and socialists in Greenwich Village in the 1910s.
