What Happens To Women Poem by Ros Barber

It's what happens to women, no matter who you are.
Divine inside? They'll only see the face.
It's coming, despite your warmth, your grit, your heart -
the sudden shift from beauty, to disgrace.
A light snapped off, and you're gone. You're in the dark.
No-one can see you now. You are unglued,
for while you slept, the world took you softly apart.
Now man after man walks through the ghost of you.

On a morning like any other, she wakes to find
her lover moved out, and all her admirers gone
from her steps, as if with one breath, one mind,
they abandoned their roses there like skeletons.
A half-penned love note stutters towards the sea,
embarrassed, undoing its ‘love', and ‘dear', and ‘we'.