red rooms past, passed to room to room to me, this present present Wombs and pearls and stories like fleshy heirlooms to birth you- Soukeyna O. Women and Wombs: Tangible History The bilum bag is a frayed womb, a ropey stringy thing of not only dancing fibres, but legacies of strength and resilience, legacy intertwined like gentle whispers in its yarny midst. The bilum bag is a rite of passage, a story, an artefact and an heirloom carried by men and women alike throughout the course of their lives- a time capsule of their mother’s wisdom, their mother’s mother’s wisdom and of their ancestors and theirs and theirs. From the Tok Pisin language of Papua New Guinea and directly translated as ‘womb’, the bilum bag is not only the beginnings of life but also the woven bag crafted by expectant mothers in circles of womanhood whereby post birth, their sleeping babies are laid in, their bodies taking the familiar position they once held in the womb. The sack, traditionally woven from foraged natural fibres, is …