conventionalised caramels.
a balding woman.
a balding man.
your lover not so much
bursting through
double metal doors
as careening slightly.
the airport pulling
on your eyebags.
sick-footed triumph.

you’re not as young as you used to be.
you waited for a long time and you
thought it meant something

no one told you that all time
exists all
at once

—

went to a speculative feminist strike
while high on disease and sleep deprivation
listened to women talk about
refusing work and disabilities
being work and emotional work
and being told to smile and
regaling each other with how
during that one strike in
iceland years ago there was
so much solidarity demonstrated
that the men ate nothing but
sausages

because they required
no cooking

the sausages
not the men

—

have you cried yet,
she said,
looking at the back of my neck
whilst it repurposed
instant noodles

one felt swoop

—

PCOS has been on my mind
and whether or not menstruation
should be considered women’s work
so unclean / hygiene
a puzzle I will have to figure out
for the rest of my embodied
existence. how grown men
can go their whole lives thinking
women bleed from their bladders
and that they’d rather stuff themselves
with cotton rather than
voluntarily
relieve
themselves.

he thought women should be
taxed for not
holding it in.

if PCOS is this
what in hell’s name
is sickness
am I me or am I
my body
turning on
your body

am I valid even when
I know I get upset
once a month and
attempt to seriously
reevaluate my existing
relationships

am I whole and sane
a woman born of rib
an iron gash between
her legs a loneliness
like a dagger the better
to stare into your soul
with, dear,

is what I want
what I want
or what I want
right now

I told her
I didn’t want to be with her
and then I had a shower
and I told her I’d made
a mistake what a fucking
whoop de doo what a
mess

that sinking feeling
when you reverse bungee
isn’t zero-gravity
it’s disappointment
at my indecision

—

we find ourselves
in a lotus garden
utopia is a chinatown
the forced nostalgia
of bamboo baskets
carrying steam. the bit-lip
bleeds. the candyfloss.
pop quiz
how can you be queer
and asian and sexually
alluring in this city. they don’t
like the chinese boys,
he says, prudent and cleave-shaven
lousy with love
a throbbing nascent moustache
on the verge of erupting

the ones who smell like coconut
and tiger balm. and arm and hammer.
and clove oil. and sea kelapa. and
bvlgari it must be such a profit puzzle
for cologne companies every time
their consumers’ x’s associate
another of their products with agonising
loss. and sea salt. and hugo boss. and
white rice. and crusted cum. and the way
the tendons between each knuckle of
slow-cooked black chicken feet feel.

he texted me a picture of his daughter
and compared it
to a picture of me 18 years
ago, both of us staring black-eyed
fat bottom lip
almost-identical bobbed hair

I’m thinking of going back to that look,

I said,

I’m thinking of taking on
that childhood sulk
an inability to eat
and a severe chinadoll
cut

—

I said, in bed,
imagine if they made
living sex dolls from scratch,
from the biomolecular level,
but just the hips,
no face,
tilted up,
throbbing,
how far our dominion
over death
it would start with tenga eggs with
living linings and warmth
a pulsing pocket pussy,
this is where all stem cells
go to die.

I think it’s a horrific idea
but likely enough
that someone
will try
it

—

I feel like
losing
and I feel
already lost

we’ll burn that bridge when we get to it,
I say
to myself,

in confidence