11/30/2021 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 Comments are closed.
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