I
I find it beautiful how hands can hold water.
That night I went without sleep as I fought my way past a
body in whose skin I’ve never felt comfortable
I sat in the shower, curled up against the tiles, eyes shut
to keep the water out.
There are always battles to be fought, and whether I came
out victorious, I’m not yet sure of.
The small victories say the most these days. The victory of
sleeping through the night, of going another day without being paralysed by
fear
The victory of being able to look at myself in the mirror
and not resent my existence:
It’s enough. Some days.
II
Last night I drew a line in the sand, told the stars to
stand that side and me over here.
‘Inspect me’, I told them, ‘tell me what it is that makes me
different from you, because I just can’t get it.’
Instead they took my voice, my ability to speak. They told
me that that was what made me different, and they burn with jealousy because of
it.
The told me they can see though my hands, and that
everything I touch feels like tequila burning silver down their throats.
I clapped my hands together, the painful ring of steel
against steel, a swordfight of wills held deep within my palms
What a war that was.
III
In the morning I practised being smoke, my skin grew grey
and I floated.
I begged to be inhaled yet tried to warn those lungs of my
danger.
By lunchtime I was safe, was solid and whole.
I didn’t eat, you know, just blew fifty puffs on a white
staff, begging it to give me my sight back
It gave me lungs to fly and when I told it that my breath couldn’t
do that
He said ‘what else do you have a voice for?’
For office gossip and the ritual of morning coffee orders.
Full cream, no sugar, double shot
Shot me twice in the heart to get it back beating
Songs over the desert as I drove myself alone to no one,
Lights beaming over nothing,
I told you I could be a star.
IV
I asked the salt of the sea how it began, and it showed me
the oceans
Cut in two the radial symmetry of the anemone
And taught me that life grows outwards.
Cut me in two, I begged, still knowing that my flaws taxed
life out of perfection.
Defined by a single structure, I wept as I became fragile,
immobile under the weight of water
I sunk
Breathing in the life of the moons I’ve chased
Growing into an elliptical orbit around the stars.
You never said I could become more.
V
This afternoon I set my eyes in a glass of gin
Swallowed down after a week of being moved from table to
fridge, freezer to pantry
In a room segmented by the shade of half drawn blinds.
I saw my stomach bloated, bit into the skin to shrink myself
Asking the shadows how small I would have to grow before I
could know about symmetry.
The stars grew angry at my command and sent me out to the
wild, where I drove past with silver lights in a car full of tequila and salt,
anemone and feeling.
Uncondemned by my curiosity, I shaped myself into a question
mark and asked why.
VI
I was sixth place in a race I could never win and I told the
sky I’d sell my stomach to leave it.
I was trying to be Jesus in the desert with no food but
Lucifer kept on asking me to dance
He’s telling me ‘Jesus! It’s okay to have an ass! It’s okay
to eat food!’
But I don’t believe him.
Because the Jesus men told me about taught me my hips were
the cause of evil,
My breasts were the temptation that Adam bit into
In the throws of love, I became sin.
Oh hide your body, girl! Hide how you were made, your soft
skin will fail me!
I never asked to become this pillar of salt
So I turned this race into a war and buried the sky in the
pit dug for the ungraceful dead.
VII
Tonight I sit in the bathtub, mixing stars and salt
Knowing everything and nothing of what I did
Breaking the seal of the ocean of blood I’ve been carrying
with me.
The symmetry of my lungs taught me to fly but I sunk beneath
the waves of my own undoing
Undoing the wars of ocean and sky in my hands
As I practised in smoke, in sand, in salt and in stars,
finding myself in a mixture of them all
Wondering how much of each will buy me back my voice
As I stand across the line parting me from the sky.
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