gritty star
my body is sweat and silk,
a wet, umami ache,
the scaffolding rigged wrong,
bones thrown together like night terrors
and half-done skeleton sketches
scribbled by some hungover eejit.
i am — what?
the discarded meat, pink
and sweating under supermarket lights.
the butcher boy knows my mother.
says she used to be pretty.
my body is friday nights folded inwards,
tucked into abdominal heat.
counting grams and macros
like a teenage girl practicing her own extinction.
and when i say i need to sit down,
it’s not a request —
it’s an admission.
my body is a blueprint
for a type of living that won’t fit
like a hug in a dressing room,
like the quiet exchange of wrong sizes.
study groups i will skip,
movie nights i will leave early,
parties that will never be realised
(the aperol is surely expired),
friends who wrinkle their noses at my taste in men,
like i am sour, rotten fruit
(they’re not entirely wrong).
my body is a burden.
or maybe i am the burden.
(maybe we trade off.)
like two conjoined twins
who haven’t got the rhythm right.
now, my body is the architect —
and all the pillars it builds
buckle before the nails go in.
slow motion, no drama, no witness.
compromised ambition leaking
through silk like sweat,
and the knowing.
(it was always going to collapse.)
kind torrent
. Lines like “bones thrown together like night terrors” and “the butcher boy knows my mother” are so sharp, unexpected, and weirdly intimate, they land hard. The whole piece walks that tightrope between self-loathing and brutal acceptance, and it owns that tension.
. Resigned but not defeated, just knowing. This is one of your strongest, for sure.
solid rapids