Changeling
When I fell I love with the shake of a head
The sweep of a fringe across honey eyes
With hard edges and cutting comments
With earnestness and sincerity
And everything in between
When the thought of going to bed with strangers unnerved me
I was so in love with the unwavering notion of love
I thought there must be something wrong with me
When I was 13 I had a letterbox of loves, real and imagined, made from long sighs and airy thoughts
and I would take them out, carefully, blow off the dust and cobwebs at birthdays and holidays
Dance with ghouls under the green and red and blue Christmas lights
The hazy mouldy smog of the artificial tree made my throat itch, triggered asthma attacks
A 1970s astigmatic capitalist daydream
Our reflections mirrored on baubles in the dark of Christmas Eve
And I lived there between branches
Polypropylene leaves digging into my skin
And I would whisper in their ears
Exchange love notes by the nativity scene
Who needed friends when I had
Tempero parietal epilepsy
(Autism diagnosis pending)
To that wild, wide eyed, unsettling little changeling
The one who would watch the washing machine for hours
Hypnotised by the universes trapped in soap bubble films
They warp and change divide and split. Mitose. Evolve. Is this what it is to play god. We are closer to him in those years. Half formed clay golems with chubby, pawing fingers, muddy hair and drooling eyes.
If I were to crawl into his lap
Do you think he would hug me close like my father never did
I remember French toast smothered in buttery creaminess. Bottled sunshine. Red berries popping on my tongue. Bursts of blood red flesh against retainers. An autumnal afternoon wrapped in a nauseous morning haze. Palms drenched in sweat.
I remember mud and dirt on knees, under fingernails. The feel of butterfly wing powder on my fingers. Digging through mud, playing with ants. I used to pluck out their legs one by one, and watch as the others tore it apart.
I remember the hypnotic lick of flames against midnight skies, paper towns and cardboard dollhouse burning to ashes in the wind. I used to imagine the screams.
Don't you think fire is so poetic. Some glitch in the matrix. As alive as a dead thing can be. Heat and light, ionised air, a chain reaction that spreads and jumps from one thing to another? Destroys in its wake. The cancer of the dead world, with its own nefarious self replicating agenda. The 2nd Law of Thermodynamics, heat death made sentient. Saltatory conduction and Conway's game of life (or death)
Do you suppose with enough time it could learn to think? Do you believe if it could it would scream?
She's been locked in her cell for too long. I'm so so tired and the mask is melting.
I used to think I was good at reading people. At empathising. Now I wonder was it just her. Playing with puzzles, matching faces to appropriate responses.
I can feel her waking up, with her wide fae eyes, her long pointed ears. The better to see you with my dear. Better to quirk a head to the side and hear you with my dear. Unhinge her jaw and swallow you whole. Feel my spine crack, bones rearrange, muscles twist. The crunch of food plunging down my throat. My scales contracting around the bolus, accommodating, slithering.
They say hate and love are two sides to the same coin and I am inclined to agree. I thought I knew hate, and then you came. Like a storm that left me desolate and full of rage. I can feel the bitterness and fury sharpening itself in my gut every time I hear your voice. The blade melting, forging. The voice driving me insane. To best you, leave you in the dust. I am so so bone tired.
If I should love my hourglass body more
There are moments when I envy men
Nothing drives my dysphoria like
Wanting to gauge out your eyes with my fingers
And fuck your empty eye sockets while you scream
Feel the supraorbital notch against my pelvis
Revel in the wet, garish squelch
I think you've gone braindead but that's alright
That's what my fingers buried in your nape are for
There is blood everywhere, god so much blood.
And here you had us all thinking you couldn't bleed
You would clap and ooh and ahh
Such a tortured soul, aching for release
Slaps on the back and salutations
"Tell us Stanley! Oh did you know since you were
a fucked up little boy pulling on Pigtails
That your self-indulgent gore pornography would revolutionise the medium of film?")
My momma used to say, clutching at her bloated belly
that she would love any baby
As long as it was happy and healthy
And! As long as it wasn't mentally...deficient. She would laugh then. How could she have a baby like that.
Some say I'm a genius mommy
I was the best in my class
I should tell you I'm sorry
My bones are sick of trying
And the redcaps in the Earth are calling to me
I hope you find your real daughter mommy
I hope you get to love her mommy
Just not the way you loved me
