bioluminescence

my eyes these months
have been an unseasonable desert
cried out, cried out
into blooms
voluptuous
waves of bioluminescence

“dive right in,” they say,
“you’re still young
you should know better
you’re too old
you’re going to die anyway
why not die in the light?”

and i am, i am
i am mourning this death of me
a self-hurled sphinx
coloured and riddled
neither one nor other
winged, anchored
not young
still bleeding
not mother

I grieve these things
as woman
the current death
in a long line of femicide

but it’s how I let him kill me
that rankles
that rises tides
drowns whole deserts
border swaggering
into territory clearly marked
“trespassers will be shot”
he comes here
to woo
to sift my grains
compare them
to the ones he brought in on his feet
tongue forked tutting,
“you did not try
you did not try
like you tried with that one and that one and that one”

oh my fibres behind my eyes
my nerves and tendons arcing
the lightning neurons turning sand to glass
my liver and spleen
even my womb
wants to tear the throat out of him
throw him to the eels

but the child, I think
the child he was
is

and instead of erecting the barbed wire
higher round my shoulders
in a spray of phosphorescence
I turn the gun on myself
the trespasser in her own land

[useful resources]

starving hungry

a dear friend came to rescue me from yet another face to face farewell (read: transparent manipulation to get me to be your source because you find yourself lonely).

my friend and i were at lunch afterward, hiding in a booth, tucked into the corner, off the street. eating paranoia as a greasy side. great for digestion.

she said, the narcs know…somehow. how do they know us, how do they pick us out? is it pheromones, facial features, body language? they zone in and cut us from the herd. from there they butter you up until you’re willing to become the nurse mother to their endless hunger.

while the great manipulator was voracious, i lost my hunger. i bled out into the bottomless bowl of him. i got lean, then thin, then brittle. sucked dry. i became a shallow saucer, unassuming, dished just enough to survive in order to please in order to survive.

[useful resources]

departure point

it really does feel like the departure point. now. the real one this time.the one where there will be no further contact, no reaction or response. that sweet grey rock spot. it feels as though this has been building for years, but it all came to a head this past year. what a horrible year for so many. but there have been upsides to it, for me. brilliant upsides. like getting out of a coercive, controlling downright toxic relationship right smack bang in the middle of covid.

it was april when I left, on the last flight out of that country before the pandemic shut it all down, running to save my life, back to a place that was sanctuary, if not home. To definite isolation – not only covid-induced, but the fact that people – even some “friends”, unfortunately, judge others from the comfort of their high horses and own experience. When you’re in a situation such as I found myself in, you’re in constant fight, flight and freeze mode…the more exhausted I got, the more it was freeze…and then fawn to keep myself alive. you’re in survival mode at that point. People who drop you like hot poop add to the soup of toxicity. @nate_postlethwait sums it up perfectly when he says, “people who are hurting can’t package their pain for others’ comfort”.

i will post in future about the toxicity of friendships and flying monkeys and their unwitting (and sometimes witting) collusion with the abuser. more importantly i’m learning to focus on the hurts and disappointments of once-were-friends less, to focus on the incredibly amazing human beings who have shone brighter than the sun at the time I’ve needed it the most.

to them I am grateful to the bones.

[useful resources]