fridays don't matter anymore

compassion is easy 
but patience is well-worn and scuffed
around the edges

tides

oceanic grief
tidal patterns of processing
unpredictable wave intensity
floats me or forces me face first into sandbars

worth/less

liniment
toothpaste
and witchhazel
these are the morning scents
these are the unholy trinity signalling effort
every day another attempt at remembering how to breathe

but, you could be better

like this, he said
clutching my hand
using my words to coat his own tongue
pontificating from one corner of the flea-bound mattress
leaving me weeping, nicotine-stained and mute, on the other 

skin too tight

the things they have said
stick under the skin
like splinters

equations

a vaguely worded text here
a mis-sent picture there
and a general dialling down
of tenderness
all these factors
can be multiplied
or diminished
depending on mood
she comes to a conclusion
that doesn't add up

May 2020

In the champagne light of early afternoon

Surrounded by the eastern patterns of my dreaming

I trawl through personalities

Try them on for size

Shed skin after skin after skin

Hoping that if I can just relinquish enough layers

The most arresting breathtaking stunning sumptuous me will be revealed

Where is she/he/they?

IN there somewhere

Or OUT there somewhere

Maybe a new outfit

A different hair colour

More mascara

Fewer embellishments

Can I strip my shell down to a flimsy

Transparent frame

A dressmaker’s dummy

A bust

A forgotten mannequin torso making friends with a spare square of budget carpeting in the corner

Clothed in chipped paint and dust

My shoulders are uncontainable and genderless

They reject all efforts at tailoring

Fitting nowhere

I cut sleeves off

Roll hems

Pin seams

But still they resist

Stubbornness is inherent in the very make of me

The shape of me

The spread of my wings too big too big too big

I tuck them in

Fold them neck-wards

Diminish the un-suckled breasts in the same movement

A posture of shrinking

Down down down

Ever inwards

The better to think about what I’ve done

What have you done now?

Always wrong

Never inside the lines

Always leaking, bleeding, bursting, stretching

Messy messy messy

Dirty and filthy and out of bounds

Writing students make me cry

Neurodiversity mouth wants to shout as loud as they do

But instead I pour sugar into every word

So sweet it will hurt their teeth

Perhaps they will write from a fairy-flossed daze next time

And save me the trouble 

Face-painting

The sticky-cold-clammy sweep of black along the eyelid

Cuddling the top lashes

Just close enough

The sharp-smooth-paradox sketch of red against the lip

Marking territory

Here, here is where the power lives

And the damp-clinging-catching comb of sooty pigment on the lashes

Cementing intention

Yes, yes, yes we are playing along today

We are ready for the follow-spot and the applause and the sore arches

      

April 2020

It hurts

Living with a weight so substantial and relentless and shifting to different bits of the body every day

I’m in pieces trying to keep up

Scrambling

Always just catching up

Always a few too many steps behind

Never ever the winner

Or even second place

In any race

But not the loser

Because people remember a loser

And I’m just not

Memorable

I sit down on the mattress

The mattress is on the floor these days

And I just cry

Weep for a very very long time

And breathe

In through the nose

Out through the mouth

The same self-soothing for years upon years and I’m not sure it even works

But I do it anyway

The I read

So I don’t feel so utterly fucking shit about myself

So fucking shit at everything and useless

And I just want the pain to stop

Just for a fucking minute

And I try to sleep by my head won’t let me

Or my body gives me a new pain to worry at

And I just want it to stop

Just for a fucking minute

I could use the terminology

Maybe that will help

That word – ‘neurodiverse’ –

As if I were a failed experiment

Rather than a human being

As is I were a mutant

I guess I am a mutant

Mutation of the genes

The tangle of DNA that just can’t figure itself out

Can’t hide anymore

Now that the routines of childhood are gone

Not that they helped much anyway

I was always ‘bright, but difficult’

So very bright and so very difficult and so very confusing

Mutant-girl-tomboy-strange-strange-strange

The streets are off 
More dangerous than ever

Not because of violence

But because of a mutated virus

I want to subsume this virus

I want to out-weird it

Out-strange it with my superior unusual-ity

I want to reclaim my map to sanity

Those shining charcoal pavements

Those shimmering bitumen pathways

That never judge me

That never talk back

Or shout

Or scold

Or expect me to be anything other than

Mutant-girl-tomboy

Anything other than queer mutant fat flesh and brittle bones

Those streets are my safe space

Safety in risk

The neurodivergent normal

That nobody but the non-normative understands

I am inside now

Almost all the time

Breaking out once or twice a week

For specialists

For medication

For the sake of the screaming inside

(The Kick Inside)

This containment crushes nerves

Calls old hurts out of exile

To resume their haunting of the corpus

This containment

Breeds hybrid maladies

In my peripheral vision

(they come out to play at night)

Out of the corner of my eye

I can almost see them sneaking up on my joy

Brief joy

Brief joy

Brief joy

Not allowed a sustained happiness

Not worthy

Not worthy

Not worthy

It hurts to fight back against the dark voices

That tell me all of the ways I am wrong

It hurts

I let them pass through me instead

The price is bile

The price is tears

The price is the black sludge

Dried blood

Long held on the inside

Long waiting to make it outside

The bounds of organs, skeleton, and skin

Nobody can tell me where it lives on the inside

A medical mystery

But I know

I know where the sticking point is

(I’m with Lady Macbeth, better out than in when the spot is DAMNED)

Mutant bodies confound medicine

We don’t behave

We don’t conform

We present an alternative

(and alternatives are frightening)

We are accustomed to performing a constant adjustment of everything

Everything is unsuitable

Everything is survivable

We are maladaptive adaptors

Mutating mutants

Queering everything

All the time, all the time, all the time

I am almost all dry on the inside now

I wonder how much more black sludge remains

How will it escape next time?

Which orifice?

I wonder how long it will take to pass

I could be curled in upon myself for days

Or I could expel it in mere seconds

Quickly flushing

Speed cleaning

So nobody knows

And nobody has to confront the secret sullied

Dirty

Filthy

Mess

Of the mutant bodily administration duties

No wonder I’m uptight

If I let go

The streets would be flooded with tar

The streets would be steaming with rivers of black ink

Reeking of menstrual blood gone bad

Rancid

Dirty

Filthy

Mess

Of the mutant bodily administration duties