cakefordogs

A collection of poetry and other writing about chronic illness and more.

Content note: food

For Amp

I pull my lunch out of the freezer and my attention is caught by the ice crystals on the food, the way they glitter in the light. It looks like a frozen landscape, lentils underfoot like pebbles, carrots and beans jutting out like rocks. I think about inviting you here, to walk among the ice crystals. We could be explorers, scaling frozen vegetables, scratching patterns into the ice, pausing to lean against a bean and nibble at grains of rice. See, this is what I eat. This is where I live.

#poetry

Somehow spring is around the corner. Or maybe autumn, or another winter - I'm no longer sure how to tell. And maybe I mean, instead of “corner”, an endless slope that I find myself rolling down with nothing to grab onto, nowhere to anchor myself. Adrift in time as it carries on bouncing past around me.

#poetry #mecfs

It's cold and I don't have warm clothes but I don't mind. I'll step back inside soon. Lie down. It's a clear morning, sun just hitting the top of the neighbour's roof. The birds flying overhead are lit up from underneath. I wasn't here last year, and I might not be here next year, but this year, today, I can stand outside and watch the sun rise.

#poetry #mecfs

Content note: UK politics, ableism, transmisia

The headlines of precisely how and their stated reasoning - the exact euphemisms for ableism and transmisia and how it's all so necessary - coalesce into a huge, sticky, amorphous blob that seems impossible to fight. I'm sorry. I feel like a failure for not being able to find a way to keep everyone safe from here in my bed. I wish I was something more than one small sick queer trying to stick their body and mind back together with no tools. Yet I think this is the best thing I can be when so many people want me to stop.

#poetry #mecfs #lgbtq+

I'm aroflux but not aro. There's a difference – for me, at least – between the specific experience of not having romantic attraction and feeling like part of the aro community. Some of the time (about 25% of the time, in fact) I do indeed not experience romantic attraction, but I've never felt like I fit as part of the community. I've never really wanted to.

There are multiple reasons for that, some of which would need a whole new essay, but part of it is that the times when I'm alloro are really important to me. I understand myself as a person who experiences queer romantic attraction. I've worked hard to accept that part of who I am.

I'm gay, in a romantic way, sometimes gay for people I have a lot of guilt over being gay for (thanks, internalised queermisia), gay in a way my aro friends don't seem to have the context to understand. I've worked hard to find ways to make romantic relationships work for me as a disabled person, creating new ways of doing relationships with very little guidance because the typical ideas of what romance looks like are for abled people only. I did that, I wanted to do that, because those kinds of relationships are important to me. And, yes, sometimes I don't have those feelings, and that occasional lack of attraction is also a wonderful part of what makes me me, but I feel like describing myself as aro ignores important aspects of myself. It gives people the wrong impression of who I am.

The aro community is doing something separate from what I'm doing. And that's okay! It's good, in fact, for people who are not me and who have different needs from me to have their own space. But it's a little strange and lonely, sometimes. I don't really feel like part of the allo, or alloromantic ace, queer communities either. As usual, I'm kinda doing my own thing, I guess.

#essays

One entity entered the marshes that day. A boy, desperate, fleeing pursuers. Lost. He heard something slithering through the reeds, and felt a presence in his mind. A creature, desperate, losing its habitat to alien colonisation. A creature able to abandon its body entirely and reside in another's mind. A creature with knowledge of the marshes, where to hide, how to escape. A creature offering a symbiotic existence, a way out.

One entity entered the marshes that day, and one entity left.

#microfiction

October 2022 mini poems

This October, like last year, I set a vague intention to write a few short poems (length ≤ 5 lines), in the spirit of inktober and other daily challenges.

1. Gargoyle

The old woman sits on the bench under the gargoyle. He remembers when she was young, when her grandmother was young. His visage grows more weathered with each passing decade, but he will watch over her family for a long time yet.

2. Scurry

Come, scurry down, into leaves, down, into dirt, down, into rock, down, scurry down.

3. Bat

Content note: body horror

Expand / Collapse Leathery wings burst through the skin of my back. I am a bat – no, that's not right. I am an eagle. My lips elongate, become a beak – no. No. I am a mouse, shrinking, no, a rabbit, no, a horse, a cheetah, dolphin, no, please just tell me who I am.

4. Scallop

They say space is an ocean. Like a fish, I hide in the scallop shell of this old space station.

5. Flame

Fire, flickering, flaring. White fades to yellow fades to red. And you, standing in the middle of it all, unharmed.

7. Trip

Ships move fast, but space is vast And our worlds are far apart Only me for company On this trip between the stars

8. Match

I remember the first time you held fire. Running up to me, lit match resting on your open palm. How far you've come, with your command of the flames. How much damage you've done.

9. Nest

May you remember to hydrate, may your meds be in reach, may your phone stay charged, may your pain level be low, may your blanket nest be comfy.

11. Eagle

In the sky of the newly discovered gas giant soars an artificial eagle who never gets tired and never has to land.

12. Forget

Half-aware pain gives way to troubled dreams. He isn't aware of the fingers coming to gently rest on his face, only the familiar presence in his mind, and the voice whispering, reassuring, forget.

14. Empty

At the end of the universe, gravity pulls everything that has ever existed into a single point, leaving nothing except one forgotten pair of jorts spinning endlessly in the void.

16. Fowl

Bedraggled, with singed feathers, the chicken squawks proudly. Under her, protected from the world, a dragon hatchling sleeps.

17. Salty

Content note: food

Expand / Collapse Coffee cup. Freshly made. Hold it gently, watch the steam. Pleasing warmth, inviting smell. Take a sip. Spit it out. Instead of sugar you've used salt.

21. Bad Dog

The mud-covered puppy tilts his head, as if to say “Am I a bad dog?” I glance at the door, carelessly left open. I scritch under his chin. “No. Never.”

24. Fairy

Make a deal with the fae. It's not safe, no, but don't you want to?

#poetry

Last October, I set a vague intention to write a few short poems (length ≤ 5 lines), in the spirit of inktober and other daily challenges. Some days I used the inktober prompts, some days I did my own thing, mostly I didn't write at all for one reason or another.

Crystal

Content notes: body horror

Expand / Collapse My thick shoes crunched on crystal floor. The ceiling glowed with eerie light. I looked down at translucent hands, my fingers hard as crystal wall.

Suit

Kindness doesn't suit you. I can tell, by the way your muscles tense as if it's a great effort not to shout. Kindness doesn't suit you, but I'm glad you're trying anyway.

Vessel

I have never been on a spaceship before. So why does it feel so familiar? I ask where am I? The ship says welcome home.

The leaves fell upwards

The leaves fell upwards this year. Stones fell next, then bins, cars. Anything not nailed down drifted lazily into the sky. We clung to branches and wondered how long it would last.

Spirit

The spirit walked alongside the couple in the park. It laughed when they laughed, gently teased the man, and sighed when it got interrupted again. If it tried, it could almost believe they knew it was there.

Fan

It's windy outside. I make myself small and bob in the breeze of the fan.

Synaesthesia

I black out the windows and surround myself with things that make me feel bright

Splat

I threw a ball of energy, caught it as it bounced off the wall, threw it again. My cat jumped on my lap and I scratched her chin, the forgotten energy splatting on the floor.

#poetry

There is a person in a house. They haven't left their house for, let's say, ten years. You ask them how they are and they smile and wink at you and, slowly, hold their hand up in a peace sign. It is dark in their room, unless they want it not to be. It is never too hot in their room, and never too cold. They are in control. They haven't had to talk to an abled person in ten years. This is a wild fantasy, so let's say their internet connection is never slow and their phone never needs charging. They have their social life to hand whenever they want it. People care so much about access that they haven't needed to leave their house even once in those ten years. They can pick up their phone and have anything they want delivered right to their room: food, books, mobility aids, healthcare (by disabled people, for disabled people). Money has been rendered obsolete and therefore presents no barrier. They live in a society that not only remembers they exist but actively works with them to make sure they continue existing. This is where my suspension of disbelief always breaks down.

#poetry #mecfs

Displaced in time, the relic of a younger, smaller universe reaches out for anything that seems familiar. Its family long dead, its language forgotten, its home planet lost to the flaring of a dying star. Strange arms offer to hold it, and it accepts, over and over. It is hugged as it cries after discovering each new loss and over time it comes to know the feeling of those arms. Soft. Loving. Familiar.

#poetry