me again.

I remember our first kiss.
Excited children,
wrapped in the warmth
of cheap apple cider
and a thin polyester blanket.
Fumbling with each other.
Unlearning our shame.

I don’t remember our last.
At some point it all becomes
so forgettable.

A kiss –
As you leave for work –
As you come in the door –
Over a shoulder –
Passing in a doorway –
Goodnight –
Good morning.

Uninteresting embraces in the
background of our life.

Until the last kiss
isn’t replaced by the next
last kiss, it hangs
in time. In the space
where we were and
nothing comes after.

And by the time you realise
that was the last kiss,
you don’t remember
where you were,
what you said.

Was it joyful and light?
Passionate, fingers gripping skin?
Achingly sad?
Loving and tender?
Whatever it was,
it shouldn’t have been forgettable.
It shouldn’t have felt uninteresting.
It was the most important
kiss of your life and now
it’s
gone.

I remember our first kiss.
I wonder if you also forgot
our last.

a.

So easily distracted.

When did all the shops
from my childhood
become self storage units?
I’m jealous of people who
own more than they can fit
in the back of their car.
To exist, tethered so
securely to this world.
I wonder what I would
lock away,
so far from me.

a.

Getting hard to tell if these words even mean anything anymore.

Do you know how it feels
to be tired.
So overwhelmingly tired.
That no amount of sleep replenishes.
No rest rebuilds you.

To be so inescapably
stupidly, exhausted,
that you can feel
in every movement
every bone inside you.
Grinding up against each other,
like rusted worn machinery,
screaming out in mechanical grief.

To be so terribly afraid
of what tomorrow may bring,
that you spend every
tiny bit of will that remains
on keeping today alive.
Because you are already old friends
with the horrors of today.

Do you know how it feels
to lose so completely
your sense of safety? Such
that your home, your very own bed,
becomes alien, a hotel room –
for a fugitive on the run.
Running from a crime they can’t recall committing.

So you dream of things once felt.
VHS tapes, little stacks of game cartridges.
Containing worlds you had a lifetime to explore.
A lifetime in which you didn’t hurt.
And the world was full of great things.
And you were full of great things.
Aching to burst from you,
and paint their colour across your future.

And then you’re awake.
And you’re alone.
And you hurt.
And the world isn’t great.
And it hates you.
And you hate yourself,
because the world told you to.
And you can’t even see a future anymore,
let alone what colour it may be.
Fuck.

Breathe.

I hope that
you never know.
How it feels,
to be this
tired.

a.

Stand against them or become them.

Calm, collected, rational.
The grown up in the room.
Things are rarely ever one-sided,
and I can see it all so clearly from up here.
Concentration camps?
Alarmist. Mass detention centres.
Gestapo?
Ridiculous. Learn some history.
But the masks are unprofessional.
Fascist? Authoritarian? Dictator?
Stop using phrases you don’t understand.
He’s bold, for sure, and maybe a bit
delusional. But
we could use someone like him over here.
But definitely not HIM, understand?
Just someone who gets things done.
Enabler? Co-conspirator? Guilty?
Ad hominem, how dare you.
I’m the grown up here, collected, rational,
calmly watching them take the children.

a.

Hypocrite.

I’ve started to brush up
against strangers,
in the shops or getting off the train.
Shoulder to shoulder,
so gently they’d hardly feel me.
Just to check I still exist.
That I haven’t become
an apparition.
Since the last time
I felt real.

I justify it to myself,
as science.
Legitimate enquiry.
But the man who touches me,
from behind, in a queue?
He is depraved, no ethical scientist.
But why?
Maybe he is just concerned
that his cock might be
a ghost as well.

a.

So how have you been?

Drinks with ‘before’ friends.
Even without the safety of
alcohol,
it makes me feel
almost normal,
for a while.
Until I catch an expression
I wasn’t meant to see,
for a second out of
the corner of my eye.
And I’m reminded.

As you move,
microscopically,
away from me at the bar.
Unintentional?
Or imperceptible shame?
Either answer tilts the room. I’m alone.
And I’m reminded of

light, easy conversation.
Just like we had before,
until I say something like:

‘Is this the kinda place
where they’ll let me
use
the
bathroom?’

And I realise I’ve ruined it.
Easy? Or shallow and safe?
Conversation
for running out the clock.
And I’m reminded.

Reminded that we’re not here
together.
We’re complete strangers.
Sat in this bar,
on other sides of the world.
And I wish for just one night
You wouldn’t remind me.

a.

It’ll happen one day.

In the queue and
no one in front of me
looks well.
I hide my sickness well.
A man says something to a nurse,
she isn’t listening.
‘Take your prescription, goodbye.’
A crisp white bag.
And then it’s just me.
‘Hi again, don’t worry,
I’m not contagious,
or at least I don’t think I am.’
A frown at a joke,
that isn’t really a joke.
‘Please wait here.’
Breath stops, heart freezes.
Is this the day
it finally happens?
I count my stash in my head:
One.
Two.
Three.
Four.
Five months,
before it would run dry.
I’m safe even if today is
The Day.
She returns and as always:
‘Are you sure this dosage
is correct?’
‘Yes.’
Squints. Skeptical?
Still not breathing. But,
I leave,
a crisp white bag.
Containing another
one,
two,
three,
four weeks of life.

a.

A visualisation of every interaction with everyone in my life.

I know one day the scales will tip.
A word, a sigh or even less,
it could be just a fact, overshared.
Or maybe another of that same old fight,
in which I ask you to meet me
in a place I know you cannot go.

We build our bonds
from boons and burdens and hope
the former outweighs the latter.
But look too close and you would see
that all those burdens, so precarious,
they were mine alone, placed when eyes were turned.

I know this to be true, in all and every
conversation. Every time I turn to speak
I feel the urgent tension of those plates,
gravitational potential just aching
to bring it all down and finally bury me
in everything I’ve ever deserved.

a.

Sponsored product links in bio.

My coffee has gone cold.
As I huddle under blankets,
into the warmth of a screen
presenting me the infinite corridor
of all of my old fears and
of new ones to come.

Daily anxiety ingested, I’m late again.
To sit in my chair.
Stare at my screen.
And make a better, richer life,
for men I’ll never meet.
I cry openly in meetings now,
but no one says a word.
Probably because they’re crying too,
I don’t know, I’m not paying attention.

My life is adorned
with cups of cold coffee.
Sprinkled around me.
Colourful little decorations
to remind me that
I cannot find warmth,
even in that which sustains me.

The phone vibrates.

Another girl has sent me ‘The Essay’.
A two thousand word think piece on:
How things are too hard.
Why she’s worthless.
That she wants to die.
I’m inclined to agree. I do too.

Yet instead I reply, trite platitudes,
about community and finding joy,
and how we have to live.
For ourselves or in spite,
it doesn’t really matter,
if I believe it and when I’m finished –
my coffee has gone cold.

a.

A mathematician but no expert.

The space I occupy
is uncomfortable
for both me and you.

A square peg,
that sanded down its edges
to fit in a round hole.

You, practised in immutability, see
contrivances and heptacontagons,
soft curves giving way to tiny surgical lines.

And I, architecture echoing every word spoken,
never hearing, but forever watching
your eyes, search for angles that surely exist.

So determined to uncover
those microscopic geometries
that prove I should not fit.

a.

You won’t get away with it.

I live in the house
of a dead man.
I wake in his bed,
and eat at his table.
I drive his car
to the job he worked.

I hardly remember
his face now.
But his shadow
lies long over
this house.

For I lie and steal and
cheat to survive.
No one would dare give
the luxury of stability
to something as base as me.

And I feel the earth,
crackling from a deep core,
asserting itself, correcting.
And I know soon that my
theft will be reclaimed.

a.

What’s in a name?

I am transgender.
Or maybe just trans?
Although I prefer
transsexual.
And the way it makes your
eye twitch in discomfort.

This doctor smiles, good news;
A pristine textbook,
says I’m not sick.
But the doctor down the hall,
his copy, slightly worse for wear,
well, that agrees with the man outside the bar.

I’m a tranny.
His differential diagnosis,
shouted across the street.
A true professional.
‘Lock it up!’ ‘A needle in the brain.’
Or maybe a fist to the face.
He can’t quite decide, he’s not qualified.

My parents can’t decide either.
daughter or son?
Did we birth a disease?
Don’t overthink it.
Just refer to me with
pauses and awkward apologies.

Yet another dinner date.
They always ask, and I guess I’m submissive.
It certainly feels that way.
In your bed. At my desk.
So fuck me til I cry.
Gods know I deserve it.

For I’ve long since given up
on trying to name myself.
To introspect and define.
It’s meaningless work.
To keep an idle mind busy,
whilst waiting on the executioner.

a.

I wish I could ask you.

What did you see in me?
That said I was the one,
from across the room.
Was it my wide eyes
or perhaps my cautious laugh?

Was it something I did?
The way I carried myself
through the world, perhaps.
Unsure and alone,
yet full of youthful determination.

I wonder, for hours at a time.
Even to this day,
though long since remade,
what quality I had
that whispered the words:
I could be yours.

And I wish I knew,
after all these years.
If you still think of me.
In small moments of forgotten shame.
A tinge of pain,
for the mistakes of the past.

Because I think of you.
I still feel the fear in my gut.
Bought by the sound of stiff shoes,
outside a bathroom stall.
Pacing. Restless. Frustrated.
As I pull my feet up onto the seat.

I hear the sound of your breath,
shallow and angry,
searching for your prey.
Time and time again,
in a stranger on the train.
Forever just out of sight.

I lay in bed, in the early hours,
curtains drawn so tightly.
Blinded by your headlights.
As you corner me again,
in that dark car park,
with your gifts and your wants.

Did punishment ever find you?
Or are you still free?
The disheveled, twisted thing,
years later, on wet pavement,
when I bit my tongue
and crossed the street.

All those days since past.
Yet I still carry your sins.
A burden chained within me,
the key long lost or discarded.
By people who never cared
enough to see it in me.

a.

Gather your men.

Call me your slurs.
Sick. Tranny. Whore.
Scream them right
at my face, but know
you might as well
spit your words into the
ground around us.

For I am not human.
I am an aching landscape.
A war torn battleground.
Cratered and fractured,
from the weapons of men.
Burnt soil, from their wars of attrition.

I am an uneasy victory.
Land reclaimed inch by inch,
with surgical precision.
Fresh lines drawn
atop twisted blackened wounds.

So I cannot respond to your words
any more than the stone or concrete
around us, unmoved, uncaring.
I, a material memorial
to the anger of frightened men.

a.

A ball of screwed up post-it notes.

Get up.
Get up.
And do something.
Just one thing.
Get up and
do something.
Anything.
Take one step.
Put on makeup,
make a coffee,
make your bed.
Cry.
Do something.
Shower,
cry whilst you do it.
Don’t stop crying.
Get dressed.
Feel worse.
Feel cheated.
Feel alone.
Feel betrayed.
Feel like
you want to curl up
in a tight ball
and die.
Make another coffee.
Feel everything.
Cry,
scream,
but get up
anyway.
Right now,
you’re right where
they want you.
But,
if you get up
and do something,
anything.
Survive.
Today,
you’ve won.

a.

We could be so much more.

Drown with me
it said.
Take my hand,
and come
to the shore line.

Spoken with such
sad conviction.
The depths,
an inevitability
of our lives.

I’m scared,
I said,
of dying cold.
There is no peace for
me in this lake.

It laughed.
You dream of
romance,
but you’re just a child.
Blinded by this failing sun.

Breathe in.

a.

Break me and watch me fix myself.

There’s a crack in the ceiling,
only thin, you’d easily miss it.
And that light switch’s askew –
but only a bit.

I could write a list
of all that is wrong in this room.
If only to distract,
myself from you.

The deep lines on your face.
Your breath angled at my neck.
A moment more and
done.

A weight is lifted,
the door here, it creaks on worn hinges.
But I am still, eyes upon
a crack in the ceiling.

a.

Just a taste.

I’m just here for milk.
But-

In a blink, I forget who I am.
Where I find myself going,
Top shelf poison,
to be freely taken.

The fall is so simple,
and to stand is so tiring.
Why should others have this relief,
when I am so starving.

I could be at peace,
my mind at rest.
All too easy,
to admit I have nothing left.

And then I’m back.
I’m just here for milk.

a.

Nothing tastes as good as consciousness feels.

‘So I hit my head’
I laughed as I said
‘How I went down,
I can’t recall,
but certainly,
it was quite a fall.’

‘How you ask?
Well I’m not too sure,
I was there, then the floor.
Got me quick,
I’m bleeding, yes,
But just a bit.’

‘Ok but why?’
‘Just one of those things,
I guess,
it’s hard to say,
why a body behaves
a certain way.’

‘Tell me please,
Have you eaten today?
Please be honest.
I know you.’

‘No.

Not since I weighed myself.’

a.

Do what you’re told.

You can dig me a grave
so shallow, a starved rat
could raise me from the dead.
But don’t you dare to
call me a monster and
curse me to your bloated gods,
just because
I won’t climb in for you.

a.

Hold on tight.

We were young,
and we took refuge
from storms around us
under tables as big as circus tents.

Reading those fantastical books
by the glow of torch light,
in warm mounds of blankets,
untouchable.

But we’ve grown
and the table, too small now,
offers itself no longer
as a fortress against the world.

For that safety
cannot be held forever.
It only survives when passed down
to those who fit under tables.

a.

Why can we only build cruel machines?

If you were
to have dinner
with the common swift,
or any such bird in fact,
be it blackbird or swallow.

And in conversation,
talk of freedom
and what that means.
Surely they would think
your explanation quite bizarre.

To describe to them
how they can fly
to distant lands.
To where the skies are warm
and food is plentiful.

But you must stay,
to pay the mortgage,
and correct spreadsheets,
and take that important client’s call –
early next Tuesday morning.

Yes indeed, that little swift
would not doubt be polite.
But leave convinced
that you were truly
the maddest ostrich of them all.

a.

You are not my king, nor I your maid.

The world of men
is blessed with a brutal unawareness.
When I say I’m afraid,
that this isn’t how things should be.
Through vacant eyes
all you can reply is
‘Looks like nothing to me’.

You, the man for whom
the world bends and twists
as you move, uncontested.
Unconcerned, with the filth, the rot
you created.
As it discolours and stains,
what would you see in the inkblot?

Would you even care to look?
If you could feel, for a moment
how this world shifts, tilts
and bows under your weight.
Would you then comprehend
why we treat you
with such contempt, such hate?

a.

Take one last walk with me.

Of all I’ve lost,
what I miss the most
are your fingers.
On that Autumn day,
nested in my hair,
pulling me in.
From coffee notes and bitter air.

But Autumn gives over to Winter,
To Spring, to Summer.
And when she returns,
we are seasons apart.
The thread between us so delicate,
wind that catches on the trees
can quietly take what remained.

Your fingers too,
have taken flight,
in search of a warmer home.
Unable, unwilling to hold on.
As I stay rooted here,
amongst the falling leaves.

a.

Is love a declaration or an act?

I know you love me.
But you love me like
one loves a painting,
forgotten on your living room wall.
Or a film,
you’ve seen one too many times.

Your love is passive.
Analytic in it’s truth,
cold and sterile.
A recurrent statement,
to be spoken as you
walk out the door.

Not something to be touched,
to be experienced.
Your love unmakes me.
Your love strands me.
It leaves me entirely
alone.

a.

There’s a cure after all.

You’re better now,
than before I mean.
Kinder somehow,
at least that’s how you seem.

Your eyes, they’re warm,
your laugh sincere,
a dissipating storm,
passing rain my dear.

But it’s come at such cost.
Your touch, your skin.
There’s something that you’ve lost.
You’re pale, so soft, so paper thin.

So you’re better now,
but not for me.
I miss the coarse, the edge, the ow!
Don’t you see?

You’re better now.
So leave us be.

a.

Keep walking.

If I were to lie
so still one would think me dead.
Would you pass me by?
Would you move your gaze to the next?
To one awake and full of life.

I’d hold my breath,
and clench my fists,
until my head swam with visions of sea and sky.
Until my nails drew aching half moons in my palms.

Could I trick pain itself
to pass me by,
just one time?

a.

You stole it all.

If I starve this body of mine.
If I tear at my skin,
with flame and needle and knife.
Would you find space in your heart?
Would you call off your hunt?
Would you lay your hate to rest?

Or are you ceaseless?
Churning like the ocean.
A deep void of monsters and rage.
And I, an imperceptible sailor,
braving waters that long to drown me.
Alone and powerless against the waves.

If I refuse to drown,
refuse to believe in a heart so black, so deep and cold.
When I come ashore,
burnt by flame,
pierced and torn by knife and needle,
starved and desperate.

Would you find space
in your heart then?
For a wretch that sailed your seas?

a.

They hate us, more than we know.

We have decided.
We have agreed.
That you are a perversion,
a disease.

And you must burn.
We cannot rest.
Keeping this place clean,
it’s what we do best.

But do not fret.
Have no concern.
For we will not feel it,
when you burn

And when you’re gone.
And we are free.

It is not you that
we shall remember.
But the brave, strong men,
who lit the match, stoked the embers.

Those noble men,
who sentence me to die.
Those cowards,
they could never look me in the eye.

a.

Take my hand.

Is dying together
better than dying alone?

If we burn together
do we not fuel their fires for longer?

And no matter how dim their embers
do we not still turn to dust in the heat?

But would our cloud of ashes,
not blacken their sky and choke their lungs?

Would they be poisoned by us
until the day they burn too?

a.

That keeps me.

And as I lay
beneath deepest sky,
drenched amethyst.

Again the moon
traces the hours across the stars,
so my mind can wander far away.

To gentle lands
where I am not afraid,
not alone,
and I can breathe deep.

But the moon’s hand brings day,
and with day, monsters,
and my fear.

Til my sky returns once more.

a.

I beg you, just once.

Part of your treatment?
What…
I said is this part of?
Yes…
And so what else?
What…
You’re done now right?
No more surgeries?
No more changes?
I can’t say for sure…
And these pills you take
I’m on different…
Are they safe?
I’m not on…
Well I’m worried
Aren’t we all…
Yes, but I’m your mother
I’m allowed to know
What…
What you’re doing
Why…
Because you’re my s-
Stop.

a.

Some things are not built to last.

A fly in the corner.
Trapped, on white porcelain,
under the weight of water.
Dead?
Did it panic?

I ponder as the first drops glisten.
Beading on my skin,
pool beneath me.
Born from me,
like a mountain river that feeds a sea.

Would I have even noticed?
On another day,
given any thought at all.
To my companion,
to the other?

Or would I have washed it away?
Like a hardened scab.
As I’ve done,
when the lake around me,
dries arid black.

Did it regret?
When it lay there,
unable to unmake,
those last few moments?
I pause.

Rinse away the blood.
Today was just practice.
Today my wings are light enough,
even if yours keep you trapped here.
For now.

a.

Men find pleasure in the cruelest acts.

The lighter sounds click, click, click
Open packet pick, pick, pick

This one, that one, no the first
They’re all the same, but that one’s worse

The heat, the ash, the waiting game
For all your wants, my claim to fame

And then it pushes, the glowing eye
It twists and screams up to the sky

For you, the pleasure, it’s only fair
That it’s my mark, my shame to wear

Now my flesh, scarred, enflamed
Was I good enough, to want again?

a.

How quickly you can be set adrift.

You do not sleep here.

This bed is yours no more,
your head will not lie with mine.
I see your eyes, your fear,
but You do not sleep here.

You must go for it’s getting dark,
where should You go I do not know.
But I will stay and shed a tear,
as You do not sleep here.

These blankets can be yours,
and don’t forget this bag of things.
In it a home to make anew my dear,
because You do not sleep here.

Leave me now for I must rest,
today was long and hard you see.
And the thoughts of You I must clear,
remember, You do not sleep here.

You do not sleep here.

a.