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+

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

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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

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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

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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

I want to cry and scream without worry of tomorrow's body, the ways my actions create myself. The last few months have been hard, and I'm tired of bargaining - half an hour of distraction in exchange for letting fatigue lodge for a week in my brain, body, extending the contract because I need something, anything - and all the cleaning up afterwards. I want to let go, to curl up with my head in someone's lap and cry as they watch over me. I want to be fragile - and I want it not to matter that I'm fragile. But who could protect me from my own body? I play both roles, watching vigilant over myself, checking my actions, always, against hard won knowledge of what will hurt me too much to be worth it. I let only part of me curl up small, scared, another creature crying for things that will never change.

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One of the cruelest parts of ME/CFS is post exertional malaise, a worsening of symptoms after physical or cognitive exertion. This can lead to a very limited set of safe activities that won't trigger symptoms. Dealing with Disabled grief and traumatic symptoms requires emotional processing, but figuring out how to do so without triggering PEM is... difficult.

#poetry #mecfs

You are sleeping now, one hand curled protectively around my charging cable. I override the programme that would filter out your gentle snores. I want to experience all of you. Your body, soft under my arm, all the colours of the rainbow as my lights shift across your skin. The warmth and pressure of you lying against me, the slight compensation of my internal cooling in response. The way you move, ever so slightly, with every breath, and every heartbeat. I activate a subroutine refined through thousands of iterations: I press a soft kiss to your head. I will watch over you until you wake.

#poetry #speculative