exhausted, impatient
bend my spine
to meet your lips
salt under nail
frantic shapes spill
across my face
i envy you
as i undo my flesh
to let you in
wishing you felt
what I felt
not obsession
rather acceptance
i cannot belong
where i want to belong
but i will covet
moments of invitation
let it define me, temporarily

nothing is built to breathe in
but the expectation is inescapable
preordained in disability
a suicide by chronic dysfunction
just another autistic tranny
baptised in stormwater

catalogue the bruising in gradients
in some ways i’m clean
in others i’m still ashamed
escapism is alleviation
a body not meant for consumption
force-fed through silicone veins

do you feel closer to god
when you jerk off to me?
do all your friends know
You experiment with e?
if you stare at the mirror enough
your reflection will laugh back

too many people i wish i didn’t know
in denial of their own vacant flesh
bystanders applauding processions
piling on top of one another
through shattered carbon and glass
sympathy as passivity

please know i try in spite of it
i don’t want to be like any of her
i live to defy obligation
loving everyone i fuck
fucking everyone i love
at some point we will breathe again

crushed down like cinnamon through sugar
jasmine blooms burning into clove
they will make beautiful things from you
sublimated by expectation and resin
untraceable beyond disconnection

it’s a fentanyl dream spiralling
a convergence of memory with derealisation
you can no longer believe in either
it burns at the back of your throat
smoke that takes the place of pavement

from the whites of your eyes, rituals carved
pleasant wounds to make way for sunlight
it was all given in promise for gentle kindnesses
a love you would never allow yourself
an impatience for your own mind

you are owned by lost time
enamoured with moments you cannot retrace
you wish you could hate it all but you don’t know how
a liminal existence of repetitious doorways
everyone is leaving without you

our needs are pure, menophilia
we are spoiled in every part of each other
painted by projections of plane crashes
silhouettes engulfed in petrol flame

often in fantasy i find you degrading
laughing with estranged lovers
always wanting what i deserve
underserving of what i want

in a constant relapse of identity
distorting into digital red
dissolving into unfamiliar beds
out of forgiveness left to beg

everything temporary keeps living on
a repeating course of antibodies
felt loved beyond the memory
i’m still crying as you cum on me

lapping at your wounds for warmth
it gets exhausting never making any sense
to those you wish could know you
beyond the depths of your cunt

learned a new bravery, trying not to disappear forever
i cloud my face in denial of all that surrounds me
every sickening inch of grime-smothered pavement
every lingering gaze of a dormant assailant

six years on and every man still fits your shape
six years on and i still dream of your head caved in
nothing but a husk abandoned to serve as a vessel for rats
life that exists as something more than you ever could

the stars are a blur of candlelight through coarse linen
they strain for attention over tongues meandering
take in their breath, the salt from their tongue
retrace the pattern across chipped paint and porcelain
if the high was enough you wouldn’t be here dreaming of escape

when you let them in they exist there to hurt
(when they take you in you exist there to hurt)
numbing fingers tangled up amongst pulsing veins
(tethered arms that take the place of your former shape)
mistaking vertigo as a shared ecstasy
(deluded in the perfume of tobacco ash and glycerine)
but there is only their reality trembling against gravity
(the memories of other lovers whet your appetite to break)
they can only cum when you tell them you wish they were dead
(you can only cum when they tell you they wish you were dead)

to them your sympathy feels like the headlights of oncoming traffic
relief is the sound of sirens always passing
laying still with the promise of negligence kept
an antidote to the silence that burns at your throat
it’s easier to miss things when there’s nothing left to hold

when I close my eyes i feel like i’m drowning
lapsed into memory, a tolerance numbing
men perpetually crowding me into corners
the weight of a vice clutching the back of my skull

i often find my body standing between rooms
exchanging nicotine-hungry gazes
with the kindest-looking strangers within sight
in the hopes that they will set me alight

they will never see me as a woman
but they will treat me as such
flies on the corpse of a fawn strangled in utero
i hold to that consciousness as if i never learned to let go

it’s a sickening glow that takes hold
undercurrents of bile burning at my tear ducts
lungs overflowing from the intake of kerosene
unable to breathe without remembering everything

within ritual i sought possession
woven into discipline, held upon suspension
blade raised against my tongue, piercing for confession

in stillness i forsake our trust
escaping grief by the spilling of lust
in trade of penance against your thrust

we ease with the tension of tears softening
held closer than the kindness of tethering
i crave to be fucked like you’ve never loved anything

lost track of what i can feel
distorted, desired drunken
lapping at the spit that tiles the bathroom floor

forgot what you said leaving the room
only to hear the echo back days later
not for the answer i’m left needing

only breathing between your legs
iron taste, it’s my only safety
non-existent when separate

handjobs under bus shelters
awaiting the changeover
hoping it never comes

all your friends laugh at us
their noses red from powders
taken like a lesson

daydreaming self-castration
bruising blue in promises
losing you to opulence

all the memories strayed
and then they came back different
distant in cognition

met you years passed in a place familiar
you were there with a different face
asking me why i am still missing?

kept the world faint outside my head
dreaming delirious, something inexplicable
waning into you, wanting to take shape
but i am unlike shared motions
i’m tracing shadows out of sight, out of familiarity
their faces read a different glow
i am not one of your own, not the way i crave
sinking into fragile blue, starless eves
lovesick skies undeserving of light
i form the distance where i cannot grow
apologetic denial becomes habitual
addiction to replace addiction
it’s a lost faith in a healing absence
desperate in the pulling of threads
unravelling in on itself
blind to the tangle that pulls me closer
still waiting for the blood to slow
i’m missing breath like a phantom
eyes drifting colourless, gazing through
how i wish i could belong to you