Noonwraiths
We wake again to remember our exclusion from ourselves: the wedding dresses frayed, the
darkening sun. Our placentas dried up somewhere in the desert with no sound. Imagine our
bodies swimming, reading books, no split into pieces. Our children will never crave our milk.
We are reflecting what you want to see. If we are not possessed by men, we are possessed.
The ruins of our wombs and twisting dust at noon. How dare we leave this world so
unfulfilled? We’re asking you a question. Be careful what you answer.
We are against the law, unmarried grating absence annihilates your crops. Searching for
space where we are not submitting to our would-be husbands. Buffering in the heat, we can
no longer die. And does it frighten you? Again be careful. Centuries of trembling.
Look we’d like to sit in silence and watch the moon.
About this poem
This poem was included in Best Scottish Poems 2022. Best Scottish Poems is an online publication, consisting of 20 poems chosen by a different editor each year, with comments by the editor and poets. It provides a personal overview of a year of Scottish poetry. The editor in 2022 was Ifor ap Glyn.
Editor’s notes:
A poem that challenges preconceptions about women’s right to remain single, to not bear children. Its dispassionate voice conveys a suppressed indignation all the more effectively, before confronting us directly: ‘How dare we leave this world so unfulfilled? We’re asking you a question. Be careful what you answer.’ Hovering over the poem is another uncomfortable question – how did the ‘noonwraiths’ of the title leave their earthly lives? Images of desert heat and fertility are intertwined with an underlying violence: ‘split into pieces’, ‘not submitting’, ‘centuries of trembling’. Always concise, the poem’s closing line is (forgive me) pregnant with meaning: ‘Look we’d like to sit in silence and watch the moon’.
Author’s notes:
I wrote ‘Noonwraiths’ in response to the Slavic myth about Południce who, according to some sources, are spirits of young women who died a violent death either before, during, or just after their wedding. They are said to appear at noon during hot summer days, wearing torn wedding dresses causing heatstroke and even death to their victims. While writing the poem, I was thinking about the concepts of interlingual and intercultural translation and ways of bringing the myth into the mind of the reader without overexplaining it. It was also important to me to incorporate cultural critique into the poem, thinking about the way in which violence against women has been represented in stories and myths and the impact of these representations on women.
