Sitting in my bedroom I long for the rain
So the world can reflect the water streaming down my cheeks
There, it’s rain now, there, dilute the salt and let it sink
Into the trees. My sadness, cycling, providing
Something useful, rather, than a mistake or admission I fight to hide.
Sadness, on display, tragedy taken to the riverbeds and sunk or
Carried away as the sky wails loud enough to drown out every sound of grief
Swimming around my head. Tragedy, it’s almost funny how the skin
Around my eyes aches with the effort to hold all
My sorrow in one place. Only it’s not. It’s like I lie
Alive dead. Neither on or off just sort of- like- and it’s like
When you were ten and tried to flip the light switch
Such that it might balance and the bulb would
Flicker desperately, trying to figure out where it fits in between
On or off. It’s two innate functions.
I crave rain for months, rain so strong it can pelt my body to bits make a
Canvas of the asphalt with my blood and gore and flesh.
There, it’s dead now, decomposing flesh. Something, someone bigger than myself
To decide for me. To say there, it’s rain now, there it’s grimy
Matter sinking into the soil or better yet fuel, my body
Cycling, providing something useful, rather, than a mistake or admission
I fight to hide. Exposed now. My bones, now. There, it’s fresh.
This month has been a series of forcings
Forcing myself to behave ordinarily
To mimic the comings and goings of normal men.
This month has passed at a cadence
Torturously, unyielding to my chronic exhaustion
To the way my blinking slows for a moment
Craving a second more to rest.
I pretend to be alive, and I pretend to be satisfied
With the life I’m leading, will lead, have led
It’s hard work but with a little practise
All the ants in my body fall through the cut
Bleed and give way to a new form of silence.
No one understands the depths of this torture.
“You are dying” they say, like it’s something worth
The risk of joking about. “There are bugs
In your skin” like they cannot fathom it,
Like it hasn’t even occurred to them that
I might live that reality.
I am restless. Cold. I don’t want to speak
For fear the words will somehow be used against me
Kill the vulnerability that makes empty threats
Like “it’s incurable,” over text root their
Way around my chest, lodging themselves in
My bloodstream. Ants. Words like ants. Little black
Things everywhere, inside me.
I hit myself to force them out. Their dead bodies mock, mimic me.
Alcohol. Wine. Injected into my name
And my veins, father did you think a slap on the ass
Would be good enough to ward me off it or are you just
As wishful as I was before I drew blades
Across fresh skin. The marks turn white in the Summer
While the rest of my body tans. Like Hong Kong sucked the Greek
Out of those parts of me. Like I’m never going to be full again.
I hate the sun for it’s nature, loathe the reminder of my selfish
Preening. Cutting down trees my mother gave to me.
I feel the same way at the waxing parlour
Where a woman neither of us know sees the most intimate parts of me
And burns them.
My sadness and I are friends
We’re close, when I was born we did a lot of
Skin-to-skin in the hour I was kept
In an incubator she crept in
To sleep beside me, lull me away from the coldness
I was suddenly born into.
In Johannesburg it’s Winter in June. Born
To the soundtrack of dying jacarandas
Pelting the car roof as we drove through
Rows of houses messily stitched together
In defiance of the harsh gravel and harsher tall grass
The islands of weeds separating the slums
And penthouses. In a country where everyone
Is rich how can anyone be? Back to
Sadness. It was always her and I.
We never had to talk about it, we would sit in silence
Let it stretch and spasm in the cold.
Sometimes I think my seasonal depression
Stems from when I was a seed and felt the lonely
Press of no one, in an incubator
As Winter bared its teeth my heart rabbited
Rapidly. Blossomed into a frightened
Volatile thing. But in Hong Kong
It’s Summer in June. And it only makes me
Feel that much more pitiful.
Sadness and I by the sea. Sadness and I
Skipping stones and reading The Great Gatsby
Sadness and I crying over my dad.
Sadness and I on the edge of a cliff overlooking
The beach where my mother claims, once
There was a wedding. We don’t ever talk about it.
Sleeping ugly, hideous maw
Briar bitch, briar claw
She thinks, sometimes, she needs to sleep
Long enough they consider her dead
Only then will it be enough
She cuts her wrist with a knife.
Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep.
Unlucky four, hideous claw
Chest bared to the defibrillator
1. 2. 3. They go on four.
She wonders, sometimes, if rest is not
The gateway to being more beautiful
Do not the flowers sleep in beds
Of soil while Winter moans?
The prettiest of things lie dead
For months, embrace the tomb.
The curvature of the spine against
A hospital bed. Angry, red sores.
A rose in a cave longs for the light
And grows skew with desire.
Mournful bitch, her dreams are filled with
Salty tears that drown a haughty bush
And kill the snails dripping from her hands
And mend the lines. And mend the lines.
Waking ugly. Still asleep. In time
She will forget the slumber. Forgive
A body for the crime of resisting arrest.
If I mean more than you,
I’m sure I don’t and I’m sure you do
Then maybe you’ll forgive me for the blood on the floor
Sorry, mom. Wish it was yours.
Box-cutter slick between my fingers,
Slack with the effort of staying awake
Until the ambulance gets here. No one’s
Called the paramedics yet, but
If I mean more than you,
I’m sure I don’t, you say I do
It’ll be a matter of minutes, seconds. Tick. Tock.
Tick. Tock. I wonder when the clock will-
So I’m holding the knife and blood is pooling
From the scraggly cuts across my-
Not to get too graphic, mom, but it’s quite a lot, I’m paler
Than I am after a Summer spent
Out of the sun for fear of sunburn
In the house for fear of being seen
I shroud my eyes in gauze and
Pray it stems the leaking. That is to say
I’m white as a sheet, white like a ghost
In limbo, strung between life and death, waiting
Impatiently, the moment before you fall asleep
And you can still hear your parents shouting.
Loud enough that I can’t find the sirens,
Like they’re hiding somewhere just out of reach
And I’m running, running-
Mom. I didn’t even lock the door.
I used to write with such voracity
I used to have such an appetite
Now, I quiver at the mere mention of my body, the house I grew up in
It’s yellowing walls and hardwood floors no match for the dread
I feel when cream carpet sinks between the gaps in my toes
I shudder at the vague outline of feelings eclipsing my mind.
Being alive is petrifying but all I’ve ever known
Is this frantic consumption, licking, peeling
Meat until one reaches bone
I struggle to contend with the magnitude of fright
Try to ease my rabid thoughts, rabid heart
Bid the world a soft goodnight
But I am not for softness, the dog in my chest
Slobbers over pitter-patter feet on grass
Brutally, it bites. Peeling, peeling white then peeling orange
Stitching skin with tongues and a knife
All the heart wanted to do was write but it seems like the world isn’t ready for it.
At least, the dog.