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Amazing women! | the art of menstruation | artists (non-menstrual) | asbestos | belts | bidets | founder bio | Bly, Nellie | MUM board | books: menstruation and menopause (and reviews) | cats | company booklets for girls (mostly) directory | contraception and religion | costumes | menstrual cups | cup usage | dispensers | douches, pain, sprays | essay directory | extraction | facts-of-life booklets for girls | famous women in menstrual hygiene ads | FAQ | founder/director biography | gynecological topics by Dr. Soucasaux | humor | huts | links | masturbation | media coverage of MUM | menarche booklets for girls and parents | miscellaneous | museum future | Norwegian menstruation exhibit | odor | olor | pad directory | patent medicine | poetry directory | products, current | puberty booklets for girls and parents | religion | Religión y menstruación | your remedies for menstrual discomfort | menstrual products safety | science | Seguridad de productos para la menstruación | shame | slapping, menstrual | sponges | synchrony | tampon directory | early tampons | teen ads directory | tour of the former museum (video) | panties & underpants directory | videos, films directory | Words and expressions about menstruation | Would you stop menstruating if you could? | What did women do about menstruation in the past? | washable pads
More poems and essays

Daughters of Eve
Letter and poem by a 13-year-old Australian girl

Dear Mr Finley,

. . . .

I want to thank you for the work and effort you've put into your genuinely wonderful and extensive museum. I'm so glad to see that someone is finally breaking the taboo that lies over the menstruation of women. And since one of us wasn't prepared to do it, I am equally happy to see a unbiased, dedicated man rise to create something out of a rather amazing aspect of womanhood that is so largely left unmentioned.

My name is ****, and I'm thirteen years old. I live in Sydney. Please don't look past what I have to say because of my age. Despite the fact that I am nowhere near to seasoned when it comes to menstruation, I have experienced its knocks and take great comfort in your website's presence. It certainly strikes a chord in me.

It seems, sadly, that we women have resigned ourselves to such a silence out of practice, and so there is something incomparably euphoric about the way you've broken the mold like this. I know many women are opposed to such a thing, seeing it as vulgar and unnecessary, and I hate to see their silences like that, to allow the essence of their femininity just fade away without a word.

Your website never ceases to fascinate me, despite the risk of being branded a "pervert" by my friends. Though there are others who see the empowerment in it, myself included.

Would it be alright if I could submit a poem to your site?

Of course, rejection would not bother me, but I would really like to see myself as a part of your movement.

Though could you please put anything that is added to your website under anonymous? Thank you.

 

Daughters of Eve

 

It seems that in this world forged

So common is misconception

That it has grown and bent with the hills

Of time's discrepancies

That are so to be clambered forth to our

Survival

 

I am a daughter of Eve.

I am the forbidden child

I must bear Her age-old curse

This poisoned cradle of mine

This clandestine key to my fruition

That weeps at the turn of time

 

She is the white to His black

Unknown and unexpected until

In Creation's faultless garden

The unimaginative muscular build became

So countered by the feminine flow

Delicate so

When God set a partner to the man

 

Oh white to His black when

She was the Mother of Life

Whose eyes so encompassed its own intangibilities;

She saw things

Passed on her blood-deep intuition

As Her mind's sights so congregated and conceived

With passage of time

When she saw more beauties than Eden

 

Man has swallowed eons

Of Her daughters

From the Living One, white,

As in the eyes of his fathers

Are her heresies and dark ink-scored mistakes

Admonishing her purity

Of a time when she took her paradise into her mouth

A treachery in her bones

A paean to her lips

A garden of perfection so revoked in her eyes

All so sculpted from Adam

And her brash refusal to be a derivative of He

With her own emancipation

Oh temptation

She took the fruit within her

Gentle lips and convinced by He,

Was left to weep at her weakness

 

Now her legacy remains

And

Must an asp be the guise given to Her free will?

Must Her disconnection from such norms, these vaunts of men

Be a shunned, shamed thing?

 

And must the blood that I shed be but a tacit irritation

An unspoken discomfiture

To be quietly gathered by a whisper in brightly coloured packaging?

 

I refuse to be shamed by my curse

I see the way I weep

Unashamedly at the turn of time

And I am proud to bear it

When the tides come for my rite

And the moon soars on silvery wings

The earth shudders

And I hear its beat

For I am attuned to its course

And cry tears for it

 

For Her daughters must live out her curse

Spill their blood beset by ritual

Wordlessly for Her

For Her run to freedom

To beat against her furrowed ground

To suck the evil from the asp

To know She who ran before them

To dance in flow under the moon

Alight

 

I am glad

I run the path to fruition

Archaic and wrought by Her

The time-aged battle sparked by flying freedom

To hold close Her memories in reverence of

Our kind.

For I am a daughter of Eve.


I shall desist with my feminist ranting now. Once again, thank you for your efforts and perseverance.

Kind regards,

****


More poems and essays

NEWS | homepage | LIST OF ALL TOPICS | MUM address & What does MUM mean? | e-mail the museum | privacy on this site | who runs this museum?? |
Amazing women! | the art of menstruation | artists (non-menstrual) | asbestos | belts | bidets | founder bio | Bly, Nellie | MUM board | books: menstruation and menopause (and reviews) | cats | company booklets for girls (mostly) directory | contraception and religion | costumes | menstrual cups | cup usage | dispensers | douches, pain, sprays | essay directory | extraction | facts-of-life booklets for girls | famous women in menstrual hygiene ads | FAQ | founder/director biography | gynecological topics by Dr. Soucasaux | humor | huts | links | masturbation | media coverage of MUM | menarche booklets for girls and parents | miscellaneous | museum future | Norwegian menstruation exhibit | odor | olor | pad directory | patent medicine | poetry directory | products, current | puberty booklets for girls and parents | religion | Religión y menstruación | your remedies for menstrual discomfort | menstrual products safety | science | Seguridad de productos para la menstruación | shame | slapping, menstrual | sponges | synchrony | tampon directory | early tampons | teen ads directory | tour of the former museum (video) | panties & underpants directory | videos, films directory | Words and expressions about menstruation | Would you stop menstruating if you could? | What did women do about menstruation in the past? | washable pads