Poetry by Sophia Holme

           ​Pawel Maryanov CC



Anesthesia 

Your childhood is a cluster of bodies
ectomorph, mesomorph, endomorph: 
no sugar until you're allergy free 
and here's your mother deciding you're too fat 
to wear a two piece at five years old your
older brother pummelling you, you take up 
too much oxygen space love whatever you exist 
too much you mustn't even glare back at him
your parents tell you, just ignore him, don't get 
involved in your own humiliation, 
so your eyes grow apart like a rabbit's, keen to every 
flicker of hostility, your maturity your protection, 
and here's your father complimenting  
your curves, how alluring they are you are
a sexy woman you are thirteen years old and being told
your toes look good enough to eat so you see, you cannot 
just live in this body it's been provocative from the moment 
it was judged female you've balanced that careful egg of gender 
on your head it weighs the world and breaks from time to time 
and your mother mistakes you for a shell: she pours 
all her hates and fears into you all her personal sex failures, 
all she feels she's owed, until there is no space left under all that  
there is no space to feel anything ugly, anything real, anything at all, 
there never can be for the girl they saw, who is nothing 
but a sheet of wiped glass, a mirror with a cartoon bow drawn on 
maybe that's why I'm burning all the time
now I've left, the feeling is finally
returning to me now.

​

Sophia Holme (she/her) is a queer poet and writer, made in Canada but now based in Oxford, England. Her work can be found in Molotov Cocktail, Not Deer Magazine, Horse Egg Literary and elsewhere. She runs, drinks a lot of coffee and enjoys reading bits of several novels at once. She tweets from @holmesophia

---