I breathe in,
inhale anything
I can get my hands on.
I hold it in, as
insides clench the air
like ice,
red to blue to purple
to pale of palest white.
I exhale,
imagine the unlove
escaping
past these crimson lips,
cut from self-loathing,
sting familiar like an old friend,
the blood clots,
stains the skin.
I have colour now.
I breathe in.
All that binds us
is what remains of
the blood
draining from the veins
of the devil corpse,
dull eyes dry with indifference
to the dark, putrid sewers
it dragged us through,
yet still you drink the blood
like it has nutritional value
and you were drunk on red wine.
Your words attach to me
like Velcro,
your disappointments
like superglue,
this love
like double-sided sticky tape,
I can’t get unstuck
from you.
It’s a swimming costume in the bath
kind of day.
It’s a child
pressing for privacy.
It’s the creeping fingers
crawling under your skin
in silent scorn.
It’s reading between the lines
between the lines
between the lines.
It’s force
that’s full body
but weak
like cheap shampoo.
It’s tears
mixing with a torrential shower
drowning your screams
for what feels like
fifty thousand hours.
It’s the trembling
no amount of layers
can cure.
It’s terror
without even needing
to open the door.
Society these days
is always out
to sell you something;
shoving TV packages
down your throat
faster than you can
find the remote
to mute the sales jargon
for the sixty pound a month ‘bargain’
and they don’t even stop to listen
to you explain
you don’t own a TV.
People these days
are always out
to sell you something;
eager to compare themselves
to models not here anymore
you might not cold call me
but you still knock door to door
asking to be invited in
to feed me statistics
of how our potential partnership
could earn me so much more
whilst your boots
walk in mud
that now covers my floor.
But for all these selling tactics
I think I’d rather stay poor,
for every material upgrade leaves me
just as faulty as the one before.
I have worked with women
who love their men
even
as his hands grip her throat
and he gloats,
whilst watching her choke,
over how she takes him back
by the time he counts to ten.
I have seen the courage of women
who leave their men
alone
with pregnant belly and two children
in a land of words foreign,
she prays I answer my phone
and find her a safe home
where he’ll never touch them again.
I have felt the pain of women
caused by a system
that didn’t lock up their men;
he only raped her yesterday
and she tells me she’s okay
but the tears spilling down her cheeks
give her fear away
as a lack of evidence gave him his freedom.
Here I stand as a woman
standing with women
who are stood on by men.
All convinced that they knew them,
so now don’t all go thinking
that it could never happen
or you’d never let yourself
be in that situation
because we’re all in motion
on a spectrum
of tolerance and bystander inaction,
and to think
that those who get bruised
are any different
than you is fiction.
Being a victim
is not an addiction,
but a symptom
of the macho masculinity affliction
that sees violence
as an ever acceptable reaction,
or that too much testosterone
is the real problem
whilst breeding the notion
that this is the natural order of things
instead of asking the questions,
why do some men hurt women?
and why is violence such a deeply gendered phenomenon?
and why are these instead not defined
as gender crimes?
Worded as ‘women’s issues’ and ‘violence against women’
whilst men’s part in the process
is the invisible omission,
like there could be another explanation
to gender relations
and we just aren’t keeping up with the times.
So here I stand as a woman
standing with women
who are stood on by men,
and if you think
that you’re a good one of them,
then what are you doing
to be part of the solution?
Last night I dreamt
we met
at the gym,
like even my subconscious knows
we are always in the habit
of eyes straight ahead,
playing running away
without you ever going anywhere.
