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