sidedish of silence with a dash of complicity
orchids in their vase my body
floating outside of physical space i am
not a vacuum or anything other than
girlthing tethered by the edge of
silver strings & umbilical cords
i fear things like Cm scales
& soft things that are actually rotten
under velvet skin you are
nothing but a pile of worms
i wash my hands with soap but
they still smell of blood and death and
violence i wash my hands and dry them but
i cannot pretend genocide isn’t everywhere
and it scares me, like this acute feeling that
under my skin there are many ants
and they crawl. they crawl, they crawl
and with their six legs and strange bodies
they mess with my neurons until all i can see is
shooting stars. i mean,
fascism is one hell of a numbing machine,
i don’t even have fear to spare, i have accelerated
out of terror into nothing, my brainspace
a dissociation field & me being dragged right thru it
we live in the central city of the Badlands
and i never did drugs or got drunk enough to forget so
defence mechanisms are kicking in, my sober body
is at the fuck-it-all, the point of no return, the
i’m too depressed to go to uni, i’m too anxious
to look in mirrors, i am
not even a person i am just a pretty mockery of one
but i smile for the snapchat selfies that i send my best friends
each filter another sickly “i’m alright”
as if they can’t see the dark circles under my eyes
i’m too young to be this old. the world
keeps spinning, it
does not stop. i bite my lip. i look at my hands
& i don’t recognize them. i burn my tongue
on too-hot tea. i text her and i think
“there’s no way she could even care about me.”
and while i draw the blinds, all around me
the world burns. and floods. and prayers mean nothing.
i wash my hands again.
floating outside of physical space i am
not a vacuum or anything other than
girlthing tethered by the edge of
silver strings & umbilical cords
i fear things like Cm scales
& soft things that are actually rotten
under velvet skin you are
nothing but a pile of worms
i wash my hands with soap but
they still smell of blood and death and
violence i wash my hands and dry them but
i cannot pretend genocide isn’t everywhere
and it scares me, like this acute feeling that
under my skin there are many ants
and they crawl. they crawl, they crawl
and with their six legs and strange bodies
they mess with my neurons until all i can see is
shooting stars. i mean,
fascism is one hell of a numbing machine,
i don’t even have fear to spare, i have accelerated
out of terror into nothing, my brainspace
a dissociation field & me being dragged right thru it
we live in the central city of the Badlands
and i never did drugs or got drunk enough to forget so
defence mechanisms are kicking in, my sober body
is at the fuck-it-all, the point of no return, the
i’m too depressed to go to uni, i’m too anxious
to look in mirrors, i am
not even a person i am just a pretty mockery of one
but i smile for the snapchat selfies that i send my best friends
each filter another sickly “i’m alright”
as if they can’t see the dark circles under my eyes
i’m too young to be this old. the world
keeps spinning, it
does not stop. i bite my lip. i look at my hands
& i don’t recognize them. i burn my tongue
on too-hot tea. i text her and i think
“there’s no way she could even care about me.”
and while i draw the blinds, all around me
the world burns. and floods. and prayers mean nothing.
i wash my hands again.
divya iyer is a queer poet from india. their work has previously appeared in rose quartz magazine, barren magazine, the brown orient & others. if they met Gender in a back alley they would not recognize her.