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