Welcome to my final Showcase for July!

Over the past month, I’ve really enjoyed exploring the many interpretations the Reflections theme has revealed. Alongside reading all of your submissions, I’ve also been listening to Radio Free Marseille and reflecting on the diverse range of sounds and  music genres it brings us.

From literal meanings: mirrored surfaces, shadows and water, to deeper, metaphorical resonances, ‘Reflections’ surfaces as gentle contemplation, appearing as a reckoning, or a means to self-enquiry and understanding.

What strikes me is that the act of reflecting is never passive; it’s an active engagement with ourselves, time, and the concrete or abstract world.

I’d like to begin this final week with Jean Akintoye’s poem , which portends a reversal of the love they feel. A complex poem, I like the way Jean has used capitalisation for effect. Her use of the lower case “i” conveys self-effacement and surrender. However, the final capital “I” signals a turning point – a deliberate reclamation of self.

Awander With The Rain Woman

i loved the thought of Your sorrow
as You severed welkin smiles and carved them to
a thunderous grimace, i loved
the ability of Your wrath to
infect
and permeate the skin of myself and
the countless, faceless Others, i
welcomed the hail You brought with every step,

and the patterings of sunlight i invited
with every traipse
and the clouds that strangled them
till their words began to fail
i adored the floods You beckoned to me
and mounted like stallions
that trampled the ground i laid
and shot my bones with cold
till my blood grew stagnant
and my soul began to soak in your
wicked, watery wiles –

i languished for the day
you’d carry me away,
you’d seduce the storm,
let it clasp me by the lungs
and drag me trachea-first to a
waterlogged neverland.

i loved You,
i needed You,
I banish you.

(c) Jean Akintoye, 2025

Connect with Jean on Instagram: @arbitrary__human

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Next up, Sam Bartle’s poem explores moments of realisation where, by reflecting, the speaker confronts and overcomes personal challenges. I liked that, with growth and persistence, they hope to move towards self-discovery and a deeper understanding of identity.

Ascendancy 

Harsh, is the day,
That banishes my right.
Cold, is the way,
Of the quickening night.
Lords of disdain
Would drive me to the dirt.
Long, is the pain,
The suffering and hurt.
But, I do not fall,
No, I swoop, then I rise.
Break through the wall,
As I reach for the skies.
Amid all the hate,
With its incessant ills.
To suffer fate,
Through malevolent wills.
They’ve battered, bruised,
Yet, I’ll not be broken,
Spat, and abused,
But I am awoken.
I rouse, resist,
Gain fortitude of mind.
Grow, and persist,
And in time may I find,
My ascendancy.

(c) Sam Bartle, 2025

Connect with Sam on Facebook: @sam.bartle.poet , X: @bartle_sam, Instagram: @poetinverse and visit their website: www.poetinverse.com

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I chose The Fourth Trimester, a short story by Kelley Dundas, because it shows how, beneath the surface of hospital chaos and postpartum protocols, lies a woman in existential freefall. There’s a black and bruised humour to this piece, the surreal flashes punctuating the steady beat of inner turmoil: the fear of being judged unfit, the alienation of feeling unseen and the terrifying solitude of early motherhood.

Ultimately, it’s a reflection not just on the body’s rupture, but on a woman’s identity dissolving and reforming under pressure – barely held together by wit, but always a willpower made of steel.

The Fourth Trimester

Entonox pumps through the hose into my lungs. I inhale so deeply I feel pressure from my organs fighting my ribcage. I am sky-high and refuse to let go of the hose except to vomit, which happens on every third contraction. Fight. Fight. Fight.

Finally, it is time to push.

“Your body knows what to do,” my midwife said.

My body does not know.

“Let’s try some pethidine.”

“No pethidine,” I gasp.

“I really think it would help you.”

“No pethidine,” my husband repeats. “It’s the only thing in her birth plan. It passes through the placenta.” Thank goodness I have a man who can repeat what I have said (and written) so it can mean something.

Three more hours. The sharp metallic smell of bile hangs in the room.

He is out. Closely followed by nearly two litres of my blood. The midwife hits the panic button, and in seconds, the room floods with people. Canulas in both hands and forearms, no idea what is going into my body, and I drift away. Outside, London floods from a month’s worth of rain in under an hour. Genesis. Exodus.

Twenty-four  hours later, I’m released from the hospital with iron tablets and contraceptive pills.

“You’re a fertile Myrtle right now.” Wink.

Feeding is not going well. I don’t have enough milk, because my body is fighting to replace the blood I lost. “Don’t give up on breastfeeding,” says the midwife.”Think of the baby.”

A lactation consultant introduces me to her Foolproof Plan to increase my milk supply, ensuring I exclusively breastfeed my child. “Feed him every two hours for 45 minutes. Then pump each side for 20 minutes. Wash and sterilise everything between each session. Oh, and the two-hour window begins when you start the feed, not when you finish pumping, and the cycle continues through the night.”

The Foolproof Plan leaves me two to five unscheduled minutes between feeding sessions, depending on how quickly I can turn over the steriliser. Twenty-four hours a day. For four weeks.

Things are not improving, and I steadily weaken. The next idea is to get an off-label prescription for Domperidone to medically increase my milk supply.

Apparently, it would be a hideous failure to supplement with formula before my son is three months old.

Two days on Domperidone and I wake in the night with palpitations. My heart is pounding so hard my husband can see its beat through my pyjamas. I spend ten hours in A&E and miss five consecutive feeds. And yet, my breathing is easier in the waiting room than it has been since he was born. There’s nothing to do but wait to hear my name called. Relief. Release. Quiet. They think I may have had a heart attack.

When I get home, my midwife says, “Breastfeeding is all about supply and demand. If you’re missing feeds, your supply won’t catch up.” I know I have ruined the Foolproof Plan by landing in A&E because of a known side-effect of off-label Domperidone use that was not made apparent to me. But are they going to take him away from me if my body cannot feed him?

Then the visitors come. Each brings a different colour and size of the same soft Jellycat bunny. Grey, white, maroon, royal blue, cobalt blue, sky blue. Everyone coos over the baby and how well we are managing and I smile as a dull ache settles behind my eyes. The conversation moves on (“Have you seen the damage from the flooding?”) and I withdraw to the kitchen and wonder about the state of my brain. I cannot hold the thread of a conversation or bear the energising movement and joy around me.

My six-week check-up at the health centre consists of a visibly hungover 22-year-old doctor who pulls out a series of questions with “Yes/No/Discussed” tick boxes next to each.

“Are you exclusively breastfeeding?”

“No, not exclusively, I’ve had to start supplementing with formula. I uh, lost a lot of blood and I’m still hoping—”

He cuts me off. “So you’re not, OK.” No. Tick.

“Has your period returned?”

“No, not yet, maybe it will when I stop breastfeeding? I’m not sure how—”

He cuts me off again. “It’ll come back soon.” No. Tick.

“Are you using contraception?”

“What? Oh, I do have some pills from the hospital, but I’m not worried about getting pregnant again right now…” That question made it into the top five.

“Great.” Discussed. Tick.

“How’s your mental health?”

Right. Can this hardly post-pubescent man even begin to comprehend the utter terror of responsibility I feel burrowing into the marrow of my bones? Or that l am inhumanely alone and unprotected, and idolised by the source of my cracking mind, body and reality? If I answer honestly, does he have the power to take my baby away from me? To label me with postpartum psychosis and have me sectioned? He does, and we both know it.

“Volatile,” I decide. Relatively safe, but somewhat honest.

“It’ll get better.” As if he knows.

Discussed. Tick.

Down the list we go, until he determines I am ready to be released from the maternity support unit and officially stand on my own as a mother. As every 22-year-old man should have the power to decide.

I walk and shush my way back and forth across my son’s room. I do not know the time or day but I can still count backward from 100. Perhaps this time, when I reach zero, he will stay asleep when I put him into the Moses basket. Outside, I see a fox trot down the middle of our street. He pauses to sniff a banana peel, then licks at the remains of a burger. Something spooks him and he freezes, then looks directly up at me. We are both suspended in the moment, both motionless.

So I do still exist.

(c) Kelley Dundas, 2025

Connect with Kelley on Instagram: @kelleydundaswrites

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In this quietly humorous and poignant reflection written by Eithne Cullen, the speaker wanders through the metaphorical library of the self. I like this poem because there is a sense of the feeling of being lost both in a literal library and within the mind’s internal architecture.

Referencing Ruth Stone’s image of the mind as vast and crowded, the poem captures the frustration – and strange beauty – of trying to order one’s thoughts in the absence of guidance in a disordered physical library.

Bumbling About In The Stacks 

the vast crowded library of my mind- Ruth Stone

it’s vast, it’s crowded; thoughts skip 
like butterflies, fleetingly from
one thing to another, taking a little
something here, leaving another there,
stacked on shelves, numbered in index files,
no custodian to make sense of them all,
no friendly librarian who smiles
and wears a badge that says Here to help
I bumble about the stacks
try to help myself make sense of it all

(c) Eithne Cullen, 2025

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I hope you have enjoyed all of the work I have chosen as July’s Pen to Print Write On! Extra Showcase Editor; I certainly have! I’ll leave you with a poem of my own: Grow. I hope this poem serves as a reminder that, beneath our surface struggles, through reflection lies the fertile ground for insight and renewal.

Grow  

Slowly, the self shifts
as stone does under centuries of rain.

Trace the tremble beneath.
You are not coming apart—

You are mind expanding.
Stand still. Feel the tide withdraw.

Let brambles snag your skin into reflecting,
roots exposed like nerves.

Hear the trickle-talk of a stream,
slipping between rocks, babbling

secrets like wind through hollow reeds
naming what you’ve buried.

Trees do not hurry.
Their green filters light

through leaf-laced air—
their trunk recording the years in silence,

ringed and unrelenting.

(c) Julie Dexter, 2025

Connect with Clair Meyrick on Instagram: @houseworkaverse and via her website www.clairmeyrickart.com

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Connect with Julie on her website: juliedexterwriter.com, Facebook: @julieadexter, Instagram: @latenightswimmer and Bluesky: @juliedexterwriter

If you’d like to see your writing appear in the Write On! Showcase, please submit your short stories, poetry or novel extracts to: pentoprint.org/get-involved/submit-to-write-on/

Hear extracts from Showcase in our podcast. Write On! Audio. Find us on all major podcast platforms, including Apple and Google Podcasts and Spotify. Type Pen to Print into your browser and look for our logo or find us on Spotify for Pocasters.

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